Vacuum Maker (Oreck) Hailed as Savior Quits Gulf Town - (Hurricane Katrina)

[Kadie]

Vacuum Maker Hailed as Savior Quits Gulf Town

By LESLIE EATON
Published: January 15, 2007

LONG BEACH, Miss., Jan. 12 — 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.

more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/us/nationalspecial/15oreck.html

[greyl]

1. Oreck products suck.

(ha ha)

Seriously though, politics ain't the only reason to not buy their products.
But, by the looks of this story, it's a damn good one.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jus_the_facts]

3. Here's an LBN thread posted by intheflow 1/9... Trent Lott questions corporate welfare..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2681288

Industry incentives vs. the Oreck challenge
By SEN. TRENT LOTT

Before taking on the big issues expected in the Senate this year, I want to address something all Mississippians should note. It's a lesson about corporate citizenship and corporate responsibility that our state should resolve to remember, particularly as we try to bring new jobs here.

Right before Christmas, the Oreck vacuum company announced it would close its plant in Long Beach. This 10-year-old plant was considered a success by the company, but the plant and its workers took a hard hit by Hurricane Katrina.

(snip)

Second, and more troubling, in 1997 Oreck signed a 10-year tax exemption to locate in Long Beach. That exemption will expire at about the same time Oreck completely closes the Long Beach plant. A lot of Mississippians will have very legitimate questions about this timing, and I think the company should have made a genuine effort to address it.

(snip)

Mississippi's public officials, myself included, must resolve to remember the Oreck example when a company is bestowed help from the public vault. The next time a guy on television asks us to "take the Oreck challenge," we should remember the many challenges Oreck left on Mississippi's doorstep.



In related news, hell freezes over.

[minkyboodle]

4. love my dyson!

The oreck guy always struck me as creepy in the commercials,
I guess the gut reaction was the right one.
PS I don't know anything about the Dyson company or inventor,
I guess thats kind of bad but I'm just trying to defend from the
eventual reply that somehow connects dyson to sweatcamps or the
Nazis :)

[KingofNewOrleans]

5. I can empathized with Oreck

He doesn't make the insurance rates, he's as screwed by the rest of us by the insurance companies. And labor and housing for labor is a continuous problem here in New Orleans too. It's really a riddle. You need to rebuild/replace 50,000 housing units, but you don't even have the housing to house the people to rebuild these units.

Maybe Oreck could have held out a little longer, hoping things would even out, I don't know.

[GregD]

6. what I heard from an Oreck dealer:

I was in Bend, OR for New Years and found myself in the Oreck store. After talking to a salesman for a while, who turned out to be the owner, the conversation turned to "An Inconvenient Truth". And there I stood listening to a Rebublican who had just seen Gore's film, understood the pending crisis, and was trying to tell everyone he encountered that they needed to see the film.

So we start talking about Oreck's post-Katrina promotion to give a unit to someone in the flood zone for every unit purchased, and that led to his telling me that after the storm - Oreck never missed a payroll - despite the place was totally trashed and nobody could work. Everyone got paid despite the tragedy.

He told me then that the plant would have to move, and what he explained matches up with the above story. The guy I was talking to really seemed to be a straight-shooter and it didn't sound like there were a lot of options than to move the plant if they wanted to survive.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cloudbase]

7. A tough call,

but at least the jobs aren't going to China.

[newyawker99]

9. Hi cloudbase!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: