Free Republic

As union workers at Mercury Marine fought over contract concessions meant to save hundreds of jobs in Wisconsin, the company's midlevel managers filed a lawsuit over unpaid bonuses. The class-action lawsuit, filed last month in federal court, argues that the Fond du Lac-based outboard-engine maker failed to pay $7 million in bonuses to roughly 100 managers. According to the suit, senior Mercury executives instructed lower level managers in April 2008 to implement a cost-savings program and assured managers that they would receive 10% of whatever savings they managed to achieve as an incentive. The suit names Brunswick Corp., Mercury's parent...

Wisconsin Union Fights To Keep Mercury Marine Company Says There's No More Time To Talk POSTED: 5:46 pm CDT August 30, 2009 UPDATED: 9:32 pm CDT August 30, 2009 FOND DU LAC, Wis. -- Mercury Marine may be moving its operation from Wisconsin to Stillwater, but union workers at the company's Wisconsin plant are not letting it go without a fight. They're trying to hold another vote on a 7-year contract that would keep the company there. The contract vote overwhelmingly failed a week ago and an attempted re-vote on Saturday ended when the company said it wouldn't accept votes...

There is no such thing as ‘a right to a job’—there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man’s right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him.” —Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights,” 1963— If you want to understand the most common reason for unemployment in America—the real unemployment rate of which is now well into the double digits—you need only look as far as Washington, D.C., home of the federal government, for the answer: bureaucratic intervention in the economy in the form of minimum wage laws, “public works” projects, “stimulus” programs and the regulation...

FOND DU LAC, Wis. – Union workers at Mercury Marine put their jobs at risk Sunday when they rejected a package of wage and benefit concessions the boat engine maker said it needed or it would move their work to a nonunion plant in Oklahoma. Union leaders did not immediately release Sunday's tally but said the vote was "overwhelming" to reject what the company called its final offer. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Local 1947, represents 850 workers at Mercury Marine, the largest employer in the eastern Wisconsin city of Fond du Lac and the world's largest...