Posted on 06/01/2004 6:22:53 PM PDT by Willie Green
WOOSTER, Ohio -- Rubbermaid Inc. was very good to the folks here in the rolling hills of rural Ohio, providing cradle-to-grave security for generations of faithful employees.
Now the company's flagship factory is shutting down, eliminating hundreds of good-paying jobs, as the Rust Belt demons that have beset so many Midwest communities descend on this sheltered hamlet.
America's economy is growing again after the worst period of manufacturing job losses in memory. But plant closings are rolling on, fanning election-year concerns about fair trade, outsourcing and the living standards of working people.
Disrupted lives and the prospect of future hardships have cast a pall over the Nov. 2 presidential ballot in a swath of the heartland stretching from Iowa to Pennsylvania.
A few miles from Wooster, Canton is losing part of its Timken Co. ball-bearing complex, where President Bush delivered a major policy address only last year. Galesburg, Ill., is losing its largest employer as Maytag moves refrigerator production to Mexico.
Here in Wooster, where Rubbermaid got its start making household products not long after World War I, the company will close its plant for good as of Tuesday, leaving behind bitter recriminations.
"It was sold down the river," declared 80-year-old Dean Foster, a retired engineer getting his hair cut near the soon-to-be-shuttered factory.
"The beginning of the end," said John Kasserman, a 36-year Rubbermaid veteran.
"Devastating," concluded Stanley Gault, former chief executive of Rubbermaid during its heyday years ago and a Wooster native who still lives in town. "The pathetic part is that it didn't have to happen."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Were there not plant closing during Clinton's 8 years?
Yes, but the must have been Bush's fault somehow. </sarcasm>
Perhaps the burden finally became too great to handle.
Pat Buchanan's economic plan prohibited factories from ever closing. Didn't you know that?
As the Economy gets better for the corporations, the workers will still be eliminated. The door to China swings one way with nothing to lose for the companies. When the eventual conflict with China starts, how will the U.S. be able to produce what it will need to defend us after all the factories have been demolished for shopping malls or turned into condos.
Factories close and businesses fail even in the best economic times. This is news?
Eventually we will reach a position where material goods are produced without human intervention.
Mankind's economic future has two possible pathways ~ (1) service industries, and (2) information extraction.
NOTE: Someday the technology available for personal use in private dwelling units will be of a nature that allows for the total elimination of every item now made by RubberMaid.
It's finally arrived.
This really IS bad news for all those Americans who've been looking forward to careers as cooler assemblers :(
It has already begun. Aside from the economic moves, anyone remember Wong Wei and the EP-3 the Chinese downed over international waters?
Not when the human intervention only costs them $0.10 an hour. A friend of mine works for a company that is in China. This ball bearing factory produces thousands of bearings a week but the payroll is under $50 American a week. The bearings sell in the U.S. for a few bucks a bearing. No OSHA, Clean air or water laws to worry about. Why wouldn't all the companies that can afford to move there?? What have they got to lose??
Yikes, Rubbermaid and Maytag are closing? And Maytag is moving to Mexico? Well that's one company that won't provide my next washer and dryer.
What they've got to lose is a lot of customers.
We do quite a bit of work for the Aerospace industry, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the US military.
Most of our contracts require that ALL bearings we purchase be make in the USA or Canada.
And this would be the case with other big suppliers that have similar contracts.
You hit the nail right on the head.......how will we indeed?
"When the eventual conflict with China starts, how will the U.S. be able to produce what it will need to defend us after all the factories have been demolished for shopping malls or turned into condos."
I fear we have already reached the point where we can't produce what we need to defend ourselves. The 'shortage' of ammunition for operations in Iraq noted just last week is a orime example - not to mention; body armor, tracks for tanks, components for our 'smart bombs'.... We don't seem to smart ourselves selling our weapons technology to our now competitors/enemies.
So what are the Chinese and Mexicans doing in this way? I doubt the average factory worker has a whole lot of say on process improvement.
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