1,200 Layoffs Strike at an Industrial City's Heart - NYT

[goforit]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/nyregion/07LAYO.html>

Chris Rank for The New York Times
Workers leaving the Carrier plant at the 4 p.m. shift change. The loss of 1,200 jobs was announced yesterday morning. Local tax incentives and pleas from the governor and a congressman failed to prevent the layoffs.

By MICHAEL LUO and LYDIA POLGREEN

Published: October 7, 2003

SYRACUSE, Oct. 6 — The name of a cooling company has been inseparable from this frost-belt city since the Depression, when city leaders scraped together $250,000 and tax incentives to lure the inventor of the air-conditioner, Willis H. Carrier, and his business from Newark. The deal worked, and the Carrier Corporation became a mainstay of a community whose best-known landmark is the Carrier Dome, the home arena for the Syracuse University Orangemen.

On Monday, the company confirmed rumors that those ties would loosen, announcing that it would close the two manufacturing plants at its East Syracuse site, laying off 1,200 workers and moving those operations to Asia and the South. The company will keep 1,600 jobs here, mainly in research and development, but the decision means that Carrier will no longer make any products in Syracuse, where manufacturing has long been a key part of its identity.

The move cuts deep in a city already buffeted this year by the see-sawing fortunes of a proposal to build the nation's largest mall.

"This is a big psychological hit," said Representative James T. Walsh, a Republican. "Carrier is our trademark. Everywhere you go, people think of Syracuse when they think of Carrier air-conditioners."

As it has across the nation, manufacturing has receded in the Syracuse area, where one of every five factory jobs — nearly 10,000 in all — have been lost since 2000. Carrier, which calls itself the world's largest manufacturer of heating and cooling systems and equipment, was also the region's largest manufacturer. At their largest, the East Syracuse plants employed 7,000.

<snip>

More than 80 percent of the container manufacturers who buy Carrier's refrigeration units are in Asia, Mr. Shaw said in a telephone interview. "It doesn't make any sense to ship a product 6,000 miles when you have a plant in the same hemisphere," he said. So Carrier plans to make the refrigeration units at a plant in Singapore.

(con't)..........

I won't be buying Carrier Air-conditioning. Time to boycott
products that take 1000s of jobs away. No one will be able
to afford the product any way!!!
:argh:

[goforit]

1. God Bless the Unemployed!!!!........Don't vote republican!!!

Gov. Pataki fails again!!!

[FarLeftRage]

2. Waki pataki FAILS Syracuse

Yes, another act of economic terrorism against New York state and America.

Meanwhile, our boy georgie cuddles up to that terrorist from Texas - the demented delay giving him all kinds of fundraiser dollars...

[evildoer]

3. While I aggree in principle to a boycott

It would most certainly drive the business offshore. I would suspect, as it has happened many times before, that they are being bested by cheap labor and technology theft as is. Until we have an administration that will truly fight to keep America producing, we will see this over and over again.
On a side note, I heard that we have lost 5 million production jobs in the last decade and gained 40 million in the service industry. Unfortunately, service jobs are transferable and leave us dependant on other countries and usually have less income. Is this the purpose of globalization?

[ozone_man]

4. Time to oust Pataki, along with Bush.

Maybe Hillary should run for governor. That would be interesting. Don't want her to run as president.

But this is the problem with our whole country. Exporting jobs out of U.S. will eventually cause our country and monetary system to collapse. Alan Greenspan says that it's OK, that we can sit back and be the world's bankers, but I don't believe him.

[sleipnir]

5. Time to Repeal Trade Agreements

We need Kucinich or even Dean as Pres. to stop this sort of shit. I'm getting sick of this. Bring the jobs back home. I'd love it if there were a CEO tax on all companys that used more than 10% international labor for their production. Imagine that, if you took a large chuck of the CEO's paycheck as a penalty, I bet these crooks would stop trying to screw America.