No matter if it’s in my hometown or half a country away the story never gets easier to hear. I can’t even fathom having a family and having to deal with that. Good luck to all my brothers and sisters in Evansville. Know that you did your best.

amen

Whirlpool layoffs begin?

These dirtbags have been doing this for years.

One of the sad stories of 2008 was Whirlpool’s downsizing of the Fort Smith, Ark. operation. I think all of those jobs are in Mexico now.

The more things change … Whirlpool is the neutron bomb that hit Newton, Iowa,
when it acquired Maytag in 2006.

Well, we can console ourselves with the fact that any day now, there won’t be any more US manufacturing plants to close, de-install the machinery, load it on a ship to Shenzhen or trucks to Matamoros, and shutter.

GRRRR.

Any company that pulls this shit must be forced to return all ARRA funds and any local tax breaks/bribes that companies are so fond of throwing tantrums over, threatening to leave if the community doesn’t pay up with tax breaks or outright subsidies. They always leave anyway. Fuck the shareholders and execs. These shitbags live so high on the hog they actually have no idea of the misery they inflict when they close an operation, because they think everyone lives just as well as they do.

Here is a site which supposedly lists appliances which are still made in the US. It’s obviously not right up to date since it lists Whirlpool, but it’s a place to start for people who wish to vote with their wallets. http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/appliances.html

I won’t be buying whirlpool if I can ever afford to replace old appliances. I think that is the only way we can punish these folks. The guvment sure isn’t going to help us.

Or, if I lost my job and my home, I think I’d take my family and pitch a tent on the front lawn of Mr. Fettig’s newest mansion. I mean, what the hell?! My tax dollars supported the payments to his company to green up. I’d do green on his green lawn!

And then there is this:

“US healthcare reform is boon for India outsourcing companies”

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0325/US-healthcare-reform-is-boon-for-India-outsourcing-companies

It’s all sickening. The outsourcing of administrative work. The movement of manufacturing jobs out of the country. The outsize pay for executives putting people in the U.S. out of work.

I have to deal with this everyday. My company has laid off almost 250 of what was 900 workers over the last year and being that I do everyone’s payroll it’s been real hard. I’ve got a stack of unemployment forms that is literally 18 inches tall on my desk. We are not outsourcing our work (engineering is hard to do that with), or do any kind of political gamesmanship and I get real mad when someone in the company tries to.

Occupy it.

Americans shld boycot Whirlpool. If you take your plant to Mexico then let the Mexicans buy your products.

How do they get to keep the ARRA funds?

And they got our tax dollars in stimulus funds?

This shit again, WTF?

Congress is robbiing us blind and screwing us over wirh our own money so they can get campaign cash. Wonder who’s gotten money from Whilpool.
God, they are such evil bastards.

They have no problem rubbing our faces in shit, do they?
And people are actually gonna vote for these pieces of human garbage?

No wonder they crap on the people. It’s a strategy that seems to work every time,.

This sucks for everyone who lost their jobs, but all this pining over “vital manufacturing jobs” needs to end. These jobs are leaving, and they aren’t coming back. They’ll go to Mexico, then Africa, and then they’ll disappear forever when they’re replaced by completely automated factories. I get that these used to be economically valuable jobs requiring skilled labor, but that’s not true anymore. There is no more machining or other skilled work, just assembly. The only economic value in locating those jobs here is reduced transportation costs, but the difference in price for American labor and Mexican labor nullifies that.
The new American economy is primarily based on engineering and creation of new technologies, and then outsourcing production to the cheapest places on earth. There’s going to be an increasing dichotomy between the people who own, the people who provide creative productivity, and the manual laborers whose primary value is geographic convenience. This is what will be the productive source of our economy. At some point the harsh reality of this will need to be made clear to Americans, that just working hard will not be enough. They will have to participate in the creative part of the economy to be rewarded with more than a sustenance wage. And to truly advance, they’ll need to invest in productive companies (which has always been true. The owners profit from the production of others).

This is happening all over. I remember a couple years back, a story about Levi’s shutting down their factories in Canada, and moving to Mexico as well. Over 2000 jobs lost. Free trade. Isn’t it great? And then they come hat in hand for bailouts. Know what GM did with their bailouts? They expanded their factories in Asia. One is to employ 4500 workers. Now what do you think that will do over here? Oh ya, lower the employed by 4500. Don’t forget to Buy American!

Thank you, NAFTA, for helping to make this possible.

Yes…and we have the neoliberal FauxDem Bill Clinton to thank for that.

Progressives need to QUIT the g.d. “Democratic Party” and START OUR OWN.

Yes, what you are describing sounds about right. Hell on earth.

We may need to introduce high tariffs unless we can get the corporations to be civilized about things.

No comments but a lot of invites for Fettig

Remind me again who is escalating the class warfare…Grrr.

If we had proportional representation like most states with parliamentary systems, that would be a great idea. As it is, we would all end up as relevent as the Teabaggers, which is to say, not at all.

It’s time to shut it down folks. It is time for a major strike, a day of action.

Are there any groups considering this? Will Labor support it? We are being consumed one bite at a time.

Buy American? Feather some CEO’s nest even more comfortably? I bought American cars for 40 years, finally called BS and picked up a used Honda. I probably wont buy another car as long as I live.

The system is broke, it can’t be fixed.

And what’s truly sickening is that a Democratic government isn’t interested in doing a thing about it.

I love how it is that America is supposed to create new technologies and procedures and the like, but not actually make them. You do realize that our educational system is in the toilet right? That states are taking money from education and other essential services because they are so strapped for cash, but somehow we are supposed to produce great scientific minds?

We are definitely the more arrogant country on this planet.

Those manufacturing jobs have to come back. Socioeconomic forces will make it. As the effects of peak oil make it more and more expensive to move things around the world, everything made overseas will become increasingly more expensive due to the fuel cost (not to mention the plastics).

The world’s collapse due to oil addiction will fix all this, but unfortunately it is going to be very ugly in the meantime. Corporations have relied on cheap oil for too long to maximize their profits. In a way, that’s why such draconian DRM and royalty laws are coming into effect. The things that don’t need to be transported by oil need to protected because in so many ways that is all we will make as a country. Sad. Really sad.

Ah, the beauty of neo-liberalism at work…backstopped by people who lecture about how “these jobs just aren’t coming back”, as if there was some impersonal, historic force that cannot be stopped. Bullshit.

A long time ago, Henry Ford took Walter Reuther on a tour of a new Ford plant. They stopped at a brand new machine that old Henry was particularly proud of. He told Reuther, “This machine will replace several of your workers, and you won’t get any union dues from it.” Reuther replied, “Will it purchase your product?”

Oddly enough, Henry did understand the situation – at least in his younger days – and acted on it. He offered $5/day long before such a pay rate was even thinkable (and got more than 10,000 applicants for a few hundred positions), because he knew that a good capitalist paid enough so that his workers could purchase the product that they made.

That’s what the new breed of corporate, “market” capitalists refuse to take into account. (And it’s strange that they have so many willing to make excuses for the behavior from supposed progressives and from within the Democratic Party.) When all these jobs are gone, who’s going to buy the washing machines?

It all comes back to Jack Welch and the American corporate mantra that whatever produces ever-increasing quarterlies, i.e. makes the market happy, is the path to economic success. In reality, it just builds a great siphon that’s draining the US…and it isn’t really lifting places like Mexico and China either. The rising tide is only lifting the yachts, because someone drilled holes in the hulls of all the little dinghies and houseboats.

The citizens in the US are the greatest consumers in the world. If we all stop purchasing the products of this type of corporation, they will go under. The people have the power – we just have to learn how to use it.

STOP BUYING WHIRLPOOL PRODUCTS.

Router bits are interesting. It’s hard to find a good router bit partly because the market is swimming with extraordinarily poor Chinese product and partly because it’s actually pretty darn hard to engineer and manufacture a really good one. Router bits turn at a ridiculous rate of speed and the slightest imbalance affects the quality of the cut. Also, the marriage of the softer casting which is the body of the piece to the hard cutters is a high precision piece of work. A good router bit is a sine qua non of machining in other words. This little bit of hardware is widely used in trades and manufacture of all kinds. The very best router bits in the world, bar none, are made by a tiny privately held company in Claremont, North Carolina. The company was literally started in the basement of a private home. It has evolved into an important local employer of skilled workers which pays American taxes, benefits and wages. Their product is the worlds best, it is also the worlds most expensive. The company competes on outstanding quality, accountability and customer service. This is America, this is what Wall Street is trying so hard to fuck out of existence. This is the race to the top in the face of the herd running the other way. Manufacturing is NOT “leaving and never coming back” dammit. I really hate this new economy BS, as if the coming of software somehow made hardware obsolete. Christ people, if you don’t water the garden your peas and beans are gonna leave and never come back.
http://www.whitesiderouterbits.com/default.html

If there’s a will there IS A WAY to avoid this continued destruction of the American manufacturing core. Whirlpool moves its plant to Mexico for cheap labor and should have a tarriff placed upon every machine they wish to sendback to the US for sale. This tarriff must eaqual the total of their ” savings” by working in Mexico. No $$$$benefit= no exporting of American jobs. It’s really that simple. Take the profit away from the profiteers and this will stop! Why, this will even cover the cost of unemployment for those they have pushed to the curb. JUSTICE AT LAST!

If our representatives REALLY want to save US jobs, the US economy, and serve people and not corporate raiders they can and should do this immediately. It is long overdue. This industrial bloodleting must be stopped immediately. Why, soon the new green jobs will be exported for the same reasons. American economic health is at stake for us and those to follow us. This can and must be done.

Please contact your ” representatives” and make the point that THEY CAN stop this exportation of American jobs to cheap labor areas and then return the foreign-made machines to us for sale. This can and should have been stopped long ago before our economy was crippled.

A tariff upon EVERY machine they make in cheap labor countries which equals their ” savings” will remove any further incentive to loot our American jobs by and for these profiteers. This is simple arithmetic. No profiteer gain = No pain for American workers. Why has this not been done? $$$$from the profiteers to our ” representatives ” has been the bribe. Our jobs; the cost of this industrial treachery. It can and must be stopped, and this will do it as soon as the tariff is enacted into law. Sure, the Republicans will howl to protect their benefactors, but that’s what they always do. This can and must be stopped before they have looted the entire country of its manufacturing base and the American jobs which go with the looting.

When you go to Whirlpool to recover the ARRA funds, also be sure to ask for reimbursement of the TAA funds.

TAA – or Trade Adjustment Assistance — is a program to aid workers dislocated by outsourcing. That money comes out of the federal treasury.

I blame both parties for this happening.They’re not doing anything to keep business here besides handing out money to big business.With all the companies that moved to Mexico how come they continue to cross our border illegally.There’s not going to be any jobs here anymore.