Whirlpool Closes Its Indiana Plant & Moves to Mexico:

[amborin]

The Whirlpool plant in Evansville, Ind., is closing this week after more than 50 years.

In Indiana, Centerpiece for a City Closes Shop

“We were considered the refrigerator capital of the world,” said Randall Reynolds, who was a forklift driver.
But that family tradition will soon end because Whirlpool plans to close the plant on Friday and move the operation to Mexico, eliminating 1,100 jobs here. Many in this city in southern Indiana are seething and sad — sad about losing what was long the city’s economic centerpiece and a ticket to the middle class for one generation after another.
“This is all about corporate greed,” said Ms. Ford, who took a job at Whirlpool 19 years ago. “It’s devastating to our family and to everyone in the plant. I wonder where we’ll be two years or four years from now. There aren’t any jobs here. How is this community going to survive?”
At a time when the nation’s economy is struggling to gain momentum, Whirlpool’s decision is an unwelcome step backward. It continues a trend in which the nation has lost nearly six million factory jobs over the past dozen years, representing one in three manufacturing jobs.
Connie Brasel, who earned $18.44 an hour making thermal liners for the refrigerators, sees Whirlpool’s move as a betrayal not just of the workers but also of the United States.
“This country made Whirlpool what it is,” she said. “They didn’t get world-class quality because they had the best managers. They got world-class quality because of the U.S. and because of their workers. And now they want to pack up and move to Mexico. I find it offensive.”

snip

“Aggressive actions by global competitors,” she said, “forces the business to consolidate production in a facility where we can deliver the product at the best cost,” referring to the factory in Mexico.

snip

The closing leaves not just Ms. Ford and her son without a job, but also her husband, a worker in the metal-pressing shop.
“My mom and dad told me that when they were young, there were jobs everywhere,” she said. “They said we had Whirlpool, Bristol-Myers, Mead Johnson, Windsor Plastics, Guardian Automotive, Zenith. Now if you want to find a job, there’s nothing around.”


Ask the workers who is to blame, and they say not just Whirlpool, but also President Bill Clinton for having negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated tariffs on trade with the United States’ neighbors. They say the pact has siphoned jobs to Mexico.
They also blame Indiana’s governor, Mitch Daniels, saying he has largely ignored their plight, and President George W. Bush and President Obama, saying they had done little to reverse manufacturing’s decline.
“When people are unemployed for a long period, they would look at any administration, including this one, as being part of the problem and not doing enough,” said Mohammed F. Khayum, the dean of the University of Southern Indiana’s business school. “It can definitely play a role in this November’s elections unless things turn around before then.”

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/us/20whirlpool.html?sq=whirlpool&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all

[Gold Metal Flake]

1. In hell Reagan laughs.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. $18.44 is the reason for this move. They'll pay Maria to do it for $2.00

I guess this means that Whirlpool appliances will cost a lot less now.

[AdHocSolver]

5. Cost less? What have you been smoking? n/t

[The_Casual_Observer]

9. Of course not, because on that end of the discussion the answer

is always, the labor component is actually a quite small % of the overall cost....

[amborin]

13. that's their mantra when anyone asks why prices don't reflect the lower wages

[amborin]

10. yep; and guess they need proximity to the us, or they'd ship it to china,

many outsourced manufacturing positions have shifted from Mex to China, where it's cheaper yet (though things are changing with the Honda strike and new found awareness)

[justgamma]

14. Funny thing is, Maria can't afford to buy their product and

Now there are 1100 people plus a thousand more suppliers who won't be able to afford to buy a new Whirlpool.

[The_Casual_Observer]

19. Somehow, the corporatists still haven't made the connection, or

even if they have, they'd rather let some other company worry about that.

[Parche]

3. this sucks fukin corporate greed

The US cannot survive on service jobs alone.....:grr: :grr:

Penalize whirlpool bigtime

[Honeycombe8]

7. I don't blame Whirlpool. If its competitors are doing it, then they have to. Perot said it...

Perot warned about this during his short stint at running for Prez, when there were discussions about the trade agreement with Mexico. As a business owner, he said that companies would be forced to move, even if they didn't want to, if their competitors were moving out of the country. You have to stay competitive, or you cease to exist.

He said that if that trade agreement passed, the great sucking sound we'd hear would be all the jobs going to Mexico.

Clinton pushed that trade deal and didn't include environmental protections or health care protections, at least to make sure the environment would be protected and that there would be a more level playing field regarding cost of workers.

Seems like Whirlpool hung in there for quite a while. When you go to buy a washer or other large appliance, don't you consider the price of it? I do. Unfortunately for Whirlpool, they and other companies feel the price competitiveness. They won't make the sales if they aren't the same price as the other companies.

[flvegan]

11. First quarter income for Whirlpool, $150 million on $4.3 billion in sales.

I doubt they "had" to.

[Davis_X_Machina]

16. That's a 3.8% or so margin....

...no one's surviving on that except a non-profit.

[flvegan]

18. Laughable.

[amborin]

12. and re-negotiate NAFTA

[Honeycombe8]

4. Aw, geez. Another one bites the dust. nt

[Jkid]

6. Here's what they're really saying.

“Aggressive actions by global competitors,” she said, “forces the business to consolidate production in a facility where we can deliver the product at the best cost,” referring to the factory in Mexico.

What they are really saying is that businesses in Mexico do not have to adhere to the same labor standards in America. Thus, it's less expensive to maintain workers.

[amborin]

8. or environmental, either; just dump it out the back door....

[AdHocSolver]

15. We had a Whirlpool refrigerator that ran for 19 years without so much as a hiccup.

We replaced it with another brand made in the USA.

If we need to buy another refrigerator, or any appliance, it better say "Made in the USA" somewhere on it. Won't buy another Whirlpool.

If enough Americans refuse to buy an imported product, then their response to "global competitors" of shipping the jobs to other countries won't do them any good.

[oneshooter]

20. I don't believe that there are any more

"Made in the USA" appliances, or televisions, or radios, or many of the products that were once invented, developed, designed or produced here.


So Sad.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[girl gone mad]

22. I buy German.

They support their workers.

[apocalypsehow]

23. Hah, I'll go you one better: my parents had a Whirlpool freezer they bought new in 1967.

4/4/1967, to be exact: we know that because the salesman who filled out the delivery sticker on the back scribbled that with a pen on the "date purchased" line. My parents had even forgotten when they'd bought it, it lasted so long.

They bought a new one in the late seventies, and gave the deep freezer to my Uncle who'd just purchased his first home. He gave it to his daughter sometime in the early nineties, after she got married. She passed it on to her son after he pledged a couple of years back, and his Frat brothers were quite appreciative. It finally went out last March, and I helped my cousins haul it away to a landfill after we'd had to have an Heat/Air guy come out and remove the compressor, take off the door, and certify it safe for disposal.

And you're gonna tell me that they couldn't build things to last in 2010, when they obviously did all the time in 1967?

In many ways, we appear to have gone backward.

[Contrary1]

17. Let's see how Mitch tries to turn this around into a plus in his column. n/t

[Vinnie From Indy]

21. He'll just lie about it!

Mitch is a mean SOB. He cut off thousands of poor families from state healthcare simply becuase he had a hissy fit over Obama's national plan. The fact that Mitch would lash out at the poorest Hoosiers over a bill that was. for the most part. written bu insurance companies is very strange and says alot about him as a person. Look for Mitch the asshole to run for Prez!