NYT: Vacuum Maker Hailed as Savior Quits Gulf Town (Oreck)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/us/nationalspecial/15oreck.html?hp&ex=1168837200&en=3b4b17524d237d23&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Ten days after Hurricane Katrina tore through town, the Oreck Corporation reopened the storm-damaged plant where it assembled its widely advertised vacuum cleaners. It hauled in generators to make electricity, imported trailers to house its workers and was hailed as a local hero for putting people back to work so fast.

But now, 16 months later, Oreck — which had employed almost 500 people at the factory — is throwing in the towel and moving its manufacturing to Tennessee. The company says it cannot get enough insurance to cover its plant here, and cannot hire enough skilled workers to replace those who never returned after the storm, mostly because they had nowhere to live.

“The decision to move this plant was a very difficult one, a very painful one,” said Thomas A. Oreck, the company president. Late last year, Mr. Oreck said, “we came to realize that conditions on the Gulf Coast had changed in ways that made doing business here very difficult.”

The move has caused an uproar in Mississippi, where the company has been criticized in the local newspaper and by government officials, including Senator Trent Lott. State officials say Oreck is the only major business they know of that has decided to leave the state in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But they concede that the problems Mr. Oreck described are hurting other businesses.

Finding workers is a challenge now along the Mississippi coast. In Hancock County, to the west of here, employers have booked all of the recruitment booths at a job fair scheduled for Jan. 25, seeking workers for jobs in casinos, factories or power companies. In Biloxi, to the east, the Gulf Coast Medical Center says it is struggling to find workers, and so are insurance companies, restaurants and trucking companies.

I can't blame them - at least they're not moving to another country.

[EFerrari]

1. They tried and got shut out by the insurance Mafia.

Hear that, McCain?

edit:t

[damntexdem]

2. At least they tried.

And what have Trent Lott and associates done to make it easier for small companies to remain on the Gulf Coast?

[LiberalFighter]

3. Build it and they will come

Doesn't always work

[Rex]

23. That is so true, just look at the Alamodome.

Thanks Zod my taxpayer money didn't go into building that travesty.

[Tom Joad]

4. That Sucks!

Vacuum Cleaner humor.

[orleans]

5. it's a hard call. after all the property they were given, the matching

grant money--a three million dollar loan at 2.5 percent interest...and they had 450 people working there now....

why can't the fucking state & fucking trent lott step in and help this company get the insurance it needs

is it strictly about the insurance? or are they getting another cheap ass loan in tenn?

[OneBlueSky]

6. the slow, ongoing, government-supported death of a great American city . . . n/t

.

[kath]

14. Reading the article reveals that the plant is not in New Orleans, but

in Long Beach, Mississippi.

On edit -- company headquarters IS in New Orleans, though.

[Raine]

7. Oreck...is a rethug

that's what I heard somewhere. x(

[DBoon]

10. Oreck advertises constantly on AAR

nt

[llmart]

12. I remember somewhere on DU......

where Oreck was listed as a Conservative Repug company. Can anyone verify that because I seriously need a new vacuum - one that doesn't weigh a ton - and I was considering buying an Oreck, but won't if it's a Repug company.

[yorkiemommie1]

13. this is all i could find ...limited info

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?city=New+Orleans&st=LA&last=oreck&first=thomas

[mopinko]

16. they aren't that good.

i have one of their floor washing machines. i got it for half price, reconditioned. still-$200. it had some truly annoying features, and basically was only so-so. i just replaced it with a bissel that is twice as good for the same money- half the list of the oreck.

[bigluckyfeet]

21. Buy a Dyson

They kick ass.

[truthisfreedom]

8. Another feather in bush's cap. The fabulous re-building of New Orleans.

Nearly perfect in every way!

[PassingFair]

9. Jobs, jobs everywhere....but none pay the RENT.

The south complains about a lack of workers, but
the jobs don't pay enough for HOUSING!

Now we are facing the same problems in the
union busted north.

We are SCREWN.

[kath]

15. Agree - factory jobs (and others) USED TO pay a fairly decent wage. Not

any more, though.

Workers have become more and more and more screwn over the past 3 decades or so. A huge percentage of jobs don't pay anything even remotely close to a living wage.
Meanwhile Corporate Murka becomes richer, and richer, and richer.

We've just about gotten back to the days of the robber barons. Paul Krugman wrote a great article about this 4 years ago, and the situation has gotten even worse since then. It's a lengthy piece, but WELL worth the read:

http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/ForRicher.html

For Richer
I. The Disappearing Middle

When I was a teenager growing up on Long Island, one of my favorite excursions was a trip to see the great Gilded Age mansions of the North Shore. Those mansions weren't just pieces of architectural history. They were monuments to a bygone social era, one in which the rich could afford the armies of servants needed to maintain a house the size of a European palace. By the time I saw them, of course, that era was long past. Almost none of the Long Island mansions were still private residences. Those that hadn't been turned into museums were occupied by nursing homes or private schools.

For the America I grew up in -- the America of the 1950's and 1960's -- was a middle-class society, both in reality and in feel. The vast income and wealth inequalities of the Gilded Age had disappeared. Yes, of course, there was the poverty of the underclass -- but the conventional wisdom of the time viewed that as a social rather than an economic problem. Yes, of course, some wealthy businessmen and heirs to large fortunes lived far better than the average American. But they weren't rich the way the robber barons who built the mansions had been rich, and there weren't that many of them. The days when plutocrats were a force to be reckoned with in American society, economically or politically, seemed long past.

<snip>

But that was long ago. The middle-class America of my youth was another country.
We are now living in a new Gilded Age, as extravagant as the original. Mansions have made a comeback. Back in 1999 this magazine profiled Thierry Despont, the ''eminence of excess,'' an architect who specializes in designing houses for the superrich. His creations typically range from 20,000 to 60,000 square feet; houses at the upper end of his range are not much smaller than the White House. Needless to say, the armies of servants are back, too. So are the yachts. Still, even J.P. Morgan didn't have a Gulfstream.
As the story about Despont suggests, it's not fair to say that the fact of widening inequality in America has gone unreported. Yet glimpses of the lifestyles of the rich and tasteless don't necessarily add up in people's minds to a clear picture of the tectonic shifts that have taken place in the distribution of income and wealth in this country. My sense is that few people are aware of just how much the gap between the very rich and the rest has widened over a relatively short period of time. In fact, even bringing up the subject exposes you to charges of ''class warfare,'' the ''politics of envy'' and so on. And very few people indeed are willing to talk about the profound effects -- economic, social and political -- of that widening gap.

Yet you can't understand what's happening in America today without understanding the extent, causes and consequences of the vast increase in inequality that has taken place over the last three decades, and in particular the astonishing concentration of income and wealth in just a few hands. To make sense of the current wave of corporate scandal, you need to understand how the man in the gray flannel suit has been replaced by the imperial C.E.O. The concentration of income at the top is a key reason that the United States, for all its economic achievements, has more poverty and lower life expectancy than any other major advanced nation. Above all, the growing concentration of wealth has reshaped our political system: it is at the root both of a general shift to the right and of an extreme polarization of our politics.


MORE

[high density]

11. I can't blame them either

It seems like a bad place to have a critical business operation... If they want to stay in business it seems wise to move to an area that isn't so prone to natural disasters.

[juajen]

17. Well, unfortunate weather happens

all over this country. Mother nature does not discriminate. Insurance companies were originally founded to even out high risk vs. low risk locations. Unfortunately, greed has taken over most of this country, and we are all suffering.

We have been warned that our homeowners ins (Allstate) will double next year. It is now at $175 per mo. for 1700 sf. 3 bdrm/2 bath. We will no longer be able to afford to live in our home of over 20 years when that happens. It is bad enough right now. We have never had a hurricane claim; but others around us have, mostly minor damage. We are about an hour from the coast, and did evacuate for Andrew. We did not have a claim for Andrew, just a lot of limbs down. By the time it reached us, it was downgraded to a category 2.

Coastal cities and towns are necessary for the survival of all of us, unless you want the super highway up the middle of our country, with all shipments received in Mexico. Think of all the people out of work then, and vast numbers of disappearing jobs. We are fast becoming throw-away people. New Orleans was a vital port. It is needed to provide goods to the rest of the country and to help prevent job loss to Mexico, which is exactly what this glorious administration is aiming for.

Please wise up people and stop the "New Orleans=disaster" meme. This wonderful city and many others along the Gulf are woven into the fabric of this great land. As one of our oldest and most charming cities, it deserves at least as much rebuilding as San Francisco after all of its disasters. NYC is ripe for a big hurricane. Will we also throw it to the wolves because it's too dangerous to live there?

[willthekid]

22. Damn good points juajen but it's part of the risk of living in a hurricane-prone area....

Florida is equally at risk as they constantly get slammed and yet still recover over and over. I don't New Orleans is going to recover any time in the near future. Maybe in another decade it will half-way return to where it was pre-Katrina but it's still a very long way away and I fear that by the time it returns to what it was none of the original culture will be in place. The city will be another mindless and Kinko's copycat of every other American city with over 400K people.

[willthekid]

18. I don't like Mr. Oreck's politics but I must defend him here....

My aunt lived in Gulfport before the storm in a trailer in the country that was wiped out. Her boyfriend actually used to work at this plant in the 90s. I helped my aunt out a few months after the storm and I have to be brutally honest: there aren't enough workers period. And for that matter: there's really not enough housing for the workers to live in either.

Housing demand is very high in the New Orleans/Gulfport area right now and yet supply is sadly low. I remember we had to do ALL of our shopping early at Wal-Mart which closed every day at 5PM due to lack of workers and lack of supplies. And ALL the restaurants closed by 7 or 8 PM because they didn't have enough workers to keep them open and business was always really slow because of the number of customers and the lack of workers to serve them. I was shocked to see Wendy's offering almost 9 bucks an hour in pay plus a 5K dollar bonus at one restaurant in the Biloxi area!!

We had contractors out the wazoo gobbling up what few hotel room spaces Katrina refugees weren't occupying. It's a big fucking mess. My aunt worked for a well-off gas-station owner who had severe damage to his business. State Farm stiffed him. He lost his home in the storm and nearly his business as well and State Farm refused to even cover his fucking house. He did get enough money for his business but from what I've been told he just got it back to normal back in August. My aunt was typical of the low-wage blue-collar type worker who moved away in droves following the hurricane since they lost their housing and homes. She's in Dallas now and has found a new job at a hotel and she has a new boyfriend and everything so she's not going back maybe for good but in the very least not for the forseeable future. Her neighbor was a nurse who lost his house and simply gathered his things and up and left for Phoenix where he found a new job in what he told my aunt was a huge open market for nurses. He found the job *2 weeks* after the storm after making some calls to other hospice companies.

The labor market down there is in a huge crunch and I have to be fair to Mr. Oreck. Most of the businesses from casinos to restaurants to factories are in desperate need of basic low-skill laborers but there simply aren't enough workers to fill all the positions. That's the same situation in large parts of Florida. There simply aren't enough workers to fill all of the positions that are open.

And State Farm and Nationwide are right now in the middle of a vicious court battle with a slew of constituents including Trent Lott believe it or not who are suing to get coverage for their homes and businesses. The insurance industry has truly screwed these people 6 ways from Sunday. Mr. Oreck moved to Tennessee for obvious reasons. One of them being mainly there are no fucking hurricanes up there. I hate to say it but if I were in his position I would probably have done the same thing due to increases in insurance rates and a lack of skilled workers. It would have been a regrettable but necessary decision.

At least he's not sending the jobs to Cambodia or China though like so many other Benadict Arnold corporations are doing. I'm just glad to see these jobs are still in the country, that's all.

[Coventina]

19. Welcome to DU, willthekid

I agree with your post. The real criminals in this situation are the insurance companies and their bad faith, and the government, which is doing nothing to alleviate the situation.

I hope the insurance companies lose and lose big.

[willthekid]

20. Thanks for the welcome

It's a pleasure to meet you. :)

It's so sad to see the collusion between the government and the insurance industry in the screwing of all these people. My aunt left and isn't coming back. She thinks it will be at least 20 years before the Mississippi Coast is where it was before the storm economically and population-wise. Cities like Bay St. Louis and Waveland were completely destroyed. When I was down there they were even talking about merging into a single city because Waveland had lost so much of its tax base.

It's very tragic indeed.

[kath]

24. kick