Posted on 11/16/2004 4:00:03 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Four hundred twenty-five jobs gone by the end of the year. That's the word Tuesday from officials who said any deal to save a furniture factory in Union County is dead. It was crushing news to Pennsylvania House workers. After three months of keeping hope alive, they went to work Tuesday morning and found their dream had been dashed.
After months of sale negotiations involving local, state and federal officials, Pennsylvania House parent company La-Z-Boy said it will go through with the plant closure announced in August.
Governor Ed Rendell broke the news to reporters over the phone Tuesday morning. "This was so important to the local economy, so we couldn't let this fail,"said Rendell. A $34 million package was put together. The governor thought he'd have until December 15th to get new owners to buy the factory, save the jobs and keep the 100 year old furniture giant alive.
"We thought we need four weeks to get it all done, the company said, 'no, we're losing approximately $300,000 a week. Our board will not allow us to keep going. We're going to have to pull the plug,'" the governor said. "I'm just more frustrated than angry."
Pennsylvania House workers said they're angry and frustrated that they were kept in the dark for months. "We were all hoping it would. We just got our official notice. We're done December 31," said Erin Mingle of Watsontown. "I've been here seven years. Now I have to start all over."
State Senator Roger Madigan and State Representative Russ Fairchild represent the area. Both are at a loss for words. Both thought a deal could have been met. Both said they've lost a lot of faith in La-Z-Boy.
A company spokesperson said, "La-Z-Boy never officially put Pennsylvania House up for sale, there was no 'for sale' sign up on the factory lot. As good corporate citizens and in an effort to save jobs, La-Z-Boy considered two offers. Both were rejected."
"What it shows me that La-Z-Boy never had the intentions at all to sell it. That's what it tells all of us. They never wanted to sell it. They were stringing up along," said worker Ben Johnson of Selinsgrove. He's made Pennsylvania House a part of his life for 25 years. He hopes for the best in the future. "I'm sure if anyone would have the opportunity to come back, they'd be more than glad to."
Governor Rendell promised one last effort, a phone call and a letter. "Somewhere we have to draw the line and say we can't lose everything to China,"
*sigh* The crushing taxes in PA have nothing to do with job loss, I guess.
I would love to see the GOP develop a spine and undertake an unprecedented effort to roll back decades of non value added regulations. The place to start is EEO BS. Eco regs are completely excessive and the whole tax structure is a major disincentive to developing automation and training employees to compete better. There is so much low hanging fruit.
Frankly, I think their furniture was too good. It is top-of-the-line stuff, but people focus on the price.
I'm not exactly sure about the details, but the Clinton administration passed through a bill to add tariffs on the import of certain types of wood.....could this be the fallout from that policy?
Making a line of repeatable furniture is now better done with a minimum of human labor and a maximum of CNC machines, automatic sanding machines and automated finishing booths. Custom woodwork requires human elbow grease, but still less than it used to.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1233140/posts?page=6#6
They can either find workers willing to work for less than $2.00 an hour in order compete with China, Indonesia and Mexico or they move. Workers can either move to China, Indonesia and Mexico along with their jobs or learn to do something else.
Eliminating all the taxes, OSHA regs and law suits will still not make American factories as profitable as those in third world countries.
Tell Willie. I am in the know.
To Willie:
As far as I know, Annyokie is both a cordial and intelligent poster on such issues. I have enjoyed his/her posts. And while I don't remember if I always agree with her/him, I can't ever recall an abusive or uninteresting post.
Do you have examples of the dollar costs of specific regulations to a typical small business?
That same year, I also toured Bethleham Steel in Los Angeles and saw the soaking pits with the big glowing ingots.
All that's gone now, but my stars, isn't the air clean in America?
None for small business. I am acquainted with overhead for large businesses. And I generally familiar with what it takes to do simple things like hiring and firing. Namely, it takes far too much effort to do either. All due to PC regs.
Okay, representative numbers for a large business would be fine.
I'm looking for specific, real-world examples of how federal regulations hurt the bottom line, rather than typical abstract hoo-hah about regulation XYZ costing US business a gazillion dollars.
I grew up in a factory town and saw it all go. People can blame regs and taxes and unions all they want, but the truth of the matter is -- nothing is going to bring those factories back or save the ones that will eventually leave. The cost of labor is simply too low in other parts of the world.
That was America's mistake: To give away our brainpower and ask nothing in return.
It ain't cheap, that's for sure. But it's built like a brick outhouse. And man do they do customer service. We filled our new family room with their products and couldn't be happier.
We still have brain power, but it's dwindling. High tech companies and other firms are having a difficult time keeping highly-skilled employees. They've taken to calling them "knowledge nomads." The come into a firm for a year or two, make mid-six figures and then split.
But those days could also be ending. I read somewhere that China/India graduate 1 million computer programmers a year.
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