I turned down several opportunities to move to Benton Harbor during my Whirlpool career, but I was never faced with move, or look for another job option. Whirlpool knows the importance of keeping as many of these highly qualified designers and engineers as possible and the present economy gives Whirlpool the edge. For most part, the closing of the design center was evitable, however the economy just moves the time table up a few years. The Company knows too well, these are not the jobs you hire the present college grads for, these are the jobs of experience, along with qualifications and it is the Evansville refrigeration history just like our furniture history, that is the most important to business.
This move will take around $15,000,000 dollars out of this fragile local economy and unless something starts to happen soon, we will start to notice the impact on Eastland Mall just like it has already hit Lawndale, North park and about twenty other strip businesses. The 200 million dollar low-ball sewer charge renovation will not help either! I am always astounded when a city Mayor and other leaders express surprise that a business is leaving Evansville. If you want to know who is next to leave, get in your automobile drive around the near North side or Westside and look at the broken sidewalks, weeds in the parking lot, building in need of repairs, etc.. A large national company like Whirlpool will not involve themselves in local politics, but over the past thirty years many of the small companies that left the city have cited the lack of interest and help from the City of Evansville.
Whirlpool, closes another remarkable chapter about the city of Evansville! We underwent a similar transition in the 50- 60’s with the lost of Chrysler, Servel, International Harvester, Arkla, and all of the smaller companies that supplied these manufacturing giants, plus the loss of the “furniture capitol of the world!” So, now we say, “lets move on, ” but now, we have a whole nation feeling the same unemployment and financial pain. And our competition, is not a competitor at all, for we have open our borders and trade laws and we are competing as a third-rate former world power and borrowing trillions. So, even as we seek to compete with others, the market speaks not in dollars, but in yuan’s!
Losing Whirlpool is a clear example what hapens when the labor union leaders get unreasoanable with in efficient demands.
none of the 300 jobs we are currently losing are union, they are all company people
He was clearly talking about the initial move to Mexico, and he is absolutely correct.
If anyone wants to know what unionism can do to a country’s productivity on a macro-economic scale, you needn’t look further than Great Britain in the 1970s. Their manufacturing economy has never recovered.
Unions played an important role in keeping worker’s interests in balance with a company’s pursuit of profits; however, unions today are a redundancy and a drain on the earning potential of workers. The amounts of money funneled into unions and thus away from the workers themselves should give those workers pause to reasses what they are getting for their money, particularly in light of the globalized economy and cheap labor competition.
Workers have no right to expect their labor will increase in value indefinitely. particularly in times of economic contraction, if the workers don’t allow for concessions in wage levels, the companies often have no choice but to up sticks and move on.
Hell man, Evansville people don’t need to study the UK to see how unions wreck a manufacturing base. They just need to take a Sunday drive around Evansville.
Touche.
The UK is a good case study in what damage unionism does on a macro-economic scale.
Hey Rev, a brisk evening stroll through Detroit could teach the same lesson. or Flint, or Gary, or Cleveland, or Youngstown, the list goes on and on.
This probably means an increase in the number of houses on the market.
The 250 -300 jobs won’t be a pimple, compared to the wart if the merger goes through. A couple of young families have indicated they are ready to move to the neighboring county, Warrick seems to be the first choice.
Why didn’t the know it all Marsha Abell step in and offer Whirlpool a deal they could not refuse.
Oh, she was to busy cutting a back room political deal with Melcher and Kiefer to hire her step son to be appointed to a department head position to a county funded agency!
Don’t you just love back room political patronage Republican style?
It seems this is a standard for our area regardless of pubs or dems. Time to clean out the good old boys from the Chamber of Commerce down to elected officials who are on strings handled by the C of C.
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