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GE threatens to move 1,050 jobs from Erie to Fort Worth
Down with the working class man! All hail the money men!
Gee, don’t forget the EMD also has Indiana paying to train its workers. Corporate welfare of the worse kind! I read they where going to pay welders only $12 an hour.
Corporate folks complained they can’t find skilled workers for manufacturing, and then want to pay them wages that the service industry is now approaching. I’m a bellhop and make $11 per hour.
I was hoping that GE wasn’t going to pull this type of thing… sure the trade unions sometimes demand to much and management should try to get the best deal they can, and the workers must realize that the company must be profitable.
But these threats of playing musical chairs with manufacturing facilities is disgusting… it used to be management had some loyalty to their workers and communities.
Now it is solely about the all mighty dollar.
this will be the nail in the coffin for the Erie plant.
Did anybody not see this coming when GE opened the plant in Fort Worth. Once again the working men and women who helped build this company are being told they must sacrifice in order to keep their jobs. This time instead of shipping the jobs overseas the ship them to Texas. All the while profits soar and the company executives get huge pay raises and bonuses. And before someone starts blaming the unions. It’s not the fault or the people trying to make a decent living. It’s the fault of the people trying to take that decent living from them and make theirs extravagant.
The writing’s been on the wall since they broke ground. There will be a For Sale sign in Erie before the year’s out no matter what sales projections look like.
texas is a right to work…errrrr I mean right to low wages state.
This is only to be expected. Why pay your workers a decent wage, when you could line the pockets of investors instead…
If GE is concerned about “plant layout” inefficiencies, then why don’t they re-model or re-build the facilities at Erie – instead of threatening their workers?
Pretty soon every worker will earn WalMart wages and live in poverty while the plutocrats live in opulence!
Does this realy suprise anyone?
Does this realy suprise anyone?
Does this realy suprise anyone?
More union busting as the bigs make more money.
Erie isn’t going anywhere. GE has poured $140 million into that facility in the past two years and employs 5,500 there. They recently spent $37 million to add capacity at the nearby Grove City engine plant. Fort Worth was about adding capacity to keep up with demand. Erie and Grove City, in fact, supply components to Fort Worth.
I am no GE fan. Just received the annual report and did not so much as open it. It went directly to the recycle bin. That being said, a rational individual can not conclude that in this real world in which we live an employer faced with more efficient competitors can not expect to prosper or just continue to survive unless it match its competitors costs. The world is changing. Look at the jobs the rail industry has eliminated over the last several decades. When I worked summers as a trainman for the Erie Lackawanna out of Port Jervis, N Y it required 24 crew members to move a train from Buffalo to Jersey City. Six men per crew over four divisions equals 24. Today it can be done
with 4 people (some may be female). Granted this is academic today in that NS no longer uses this former Erie route east of Binghamton but Conrail and the NYS&W did operate three to four trains each way over this route with four people. You get the picture. The capitalist system has produced the wealth it has by requiring this type of efficiency. If one employes more personnel at higher than prevailing wage rates it will be eliminated. It is a matter of survival. Charles Darwin some 150 years ago in the natural world called this competition survival of the fittest. The marvelous bodies that we have today we owe to this competition. Everything that was inferior did not make the cut is no longer here and so those weaknesses were eliminated from the gene pool. Hence our strengths. The capitalist system bears many similarities. GE or any organization, private or public, can try to be nice guys and go the way of the dodo bird in the process. People must get the training to enable themselves to make greater contributions and so justify higher wages. That’s the only sustainable way to survive. I have empathy for people who are left on the sidelines by technological change but they are reaping what they have sowen. Personally, I saw the changes coming in the railroad industry to at least some extent and so s
The comments so far clearly favor union labor. The problem with some unions is that their bosses are trying to keep up with the corporate big wigs. The workers become the losers when higher union dues are required.
It would be really nice if CEO’s and football players quit making such outlandish money and people respected other people. However, until political spending is brought under control there seems to be no hope for a return to a sane society.
Another big corporation putting profits before people.
Another big corporation putting profits before people.
It’s whatever it takes to make capitalism work. Publicly held companies have 3 customer bases: The employees, the companys that purchase the product, and the stockholders. Guess which base gets the most attention?
The stockholders! Company management responds to the will of those who have invested money in the company, and expect a return on their investment. If the stockholders want a higher return, they will replace the managers of the company with others who will tell them, “more dollars are coming, guys!”
So the board, wanting to keep their high paying positions, will do what it can to make more money for the stockholders…including raising the prices to the produce purchaser, and paying the employees less in wages and benefits. And anything else it takes to lower expenses.
By being investors in these companies, we are “giving it to ourselves in our own shorts!!”
I knew this was in the offing when they opened a plant in Texas with it’s right to screw the middle class workers. These big multinationals are killing the goose that layes the golden egg, meaning the properly paid middle class.
This is how it all starts, good-bye Erie.