Unions Fight to Save—and Stimulate—Manufacturing Jobs

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5616/unions_fight_to_save--and_stimulate--manufacturing_jobs/

Friday February 26 1:31 pm

By David Moberg

Last August, managers at the Whirlpool refrigerator plant in the southern Indiana city of Evansville called electrical workers union (IUE-CWA) local president Darrell Collins to an early morning meeting. They unceremoniously told him that Whirlpool, a fixture of the community for five decades, would close the factory in June 2010, eliminating 1,100 jobs.

Although they blamed slow sales resulting from the housing bust, they were not eliminating production of refrigerators. They were moving operations to an expanding factory in Monterrey, Mexico.


(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)


“They wouldn’t sit down and negotiate or talk to us about it at all,” Collins says. “They just said that with the number of plants they had, it was beneficial to eliminate some."

The decision hurt doubly when Collins recalled how local governments “gave Whirlpool tax break after tax break to invest here, and the company lied about how many jobs were created.” And it hurt even more as he thought about the $19 million in federal stimulus money Whirlpool got to create new jobs.

“We made Whirlpool what it is,” Collins says. “There’s no reason why the company can’t turn this around and say, “I’m not moving the company out of the U.S.’”

So today–Friday–hundreds of workers and community supporters, including the mayor, are planning to join in a demonstration at the plant with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. The company, apparently, is not too happy about that. On Wednesday management sent a letter urging employees, many of whom will lose their jobs in March, not to participate and ominously warning “that these negative activities will only hamper employees when they look for future jobs.”

FULL story at link.

[Donnachaidh]

1. who the hell would unrec this? K&R!

[OhioChick]

2. Seems to be a lot of that going around.

K&R

[amborin]

3. recommended

[RKP5637]

4. +1000, n/t