Posted on 08/13/2005 11:19:39 AM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
INDIANAPOLIS - DaimlerChrysler AG will close its Indianapolis foundry and eliminate 881 jobs by Sept. 30, reducing the automaker's once formidable Indiana manufacturing presence to just the city of Kokomo.
DaimlerChrysler recently notified the Indiana Department of Workforce Development of the closure under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, Act. The law requires employers to give 60 days notice before certain plant closings and layoffs. The loss of 881 jobs is the largest in Indiana under WARN this year.
A provision in the four-year labor agreement struck by the automaker and the United Auto Workers in 2003 called for the foundry to close by the end of the third quarter of 2005, company spokeswoman Curtrise Garner said Friday.
"The company and union jointly agreed to that," she said by telephone from DaimlerChrysler's U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich.
News reports at the time of the labor agreement said DaimlerChrysler would phase out the foundry over four years. The plant along Interstate 70 west of downtown Indianapolis produces V-6 and V-8 engine blocks.
UAW Local 550 represents workers at the foundry. Local President James Clark had little to say about the closure when asked for comment Friday. The affected workers, most of whom now live in Indianapolis, have been offered jobs at a variety of other DaimlerChrysler plants, he said.
Workers who choose to transfer to another DaimlerChrysler plant instead of retiring receive 95 percent of their base pay after taxes until a new job is found for them, Garner said.
Department of Workforce Development agency officials will meet with DaimlerChrysler representatives next Thursday to discuss state job assistance to the affected workers, agency spokesman Kip Chase said.
The plant was owned by American Foundry Co. until Chrysler bought it in 1946. The automaker invested in major upgrades there in 1964, 1978, 1988, and the late 1990s.
The closing will diminish DaimlerChrysler's presence in Indiana to Kokomo, where three transmission plants and an aluminum casting plant employ about 7,500 workers. The automaker spun off its 1,400-worker New Castle machine shop to a joint venture three year ago, ending a 96-year history in the eastern Indiana city where the high school still bears the Chrysler name.
The notice to the state of 881 jobs being lost topped Indiana's largest previous WARN job loss this year, for 613 jobs eliminated with the June closure of Tower Automotive's auto frame assembly plant in Corydon.
Ahem. I'm almost two years older than Mr. Turner, with a negative net worth, and he gets 325,000 shares of MS just for signing.
Unless you have physical possession and control of the natural resources and production infrastructure, trade can be a very ineffective "weapon" that often backfires to shoot yourself in the foot.
It's much better to refrain from such targetted micromanagement and levy tariffs as a simple means of raising revenue only: flat rate applied equally to ALL imported goods, regardless of where they come from.
Such a "revenue tariff" is actually self-capping.
At relatively low rates, revenues increase with an increase in the tariff rate.
However, there is a point of diminishing returns when an increase in the tariff rate will reduce revenue because trade has been excessively discouraged.
Ideally, the revenue tariff should be set at the level that maximizes revenue, enabling other forms of domestic taxation to be reduced.
Sorry if you are an advocate of the Zero Sum argument. Capitalism is about creating wealth, and socialism is about transferring wealth from those that create it to those that do not. CAFTA and NAFTA are simply transferences of wealth from the US to others who are not as productive or as capitalist as we are; they are neither creative nor capitalist.
You can eliminate unions, regulations and the minimum wage, the simple fact of the matter is that American workers will never be competitive with emerging countries like China in price.
Where Americans can be competitive is in high end jobs that require specialized skill sets.
hmmm...good points, all.
Not for long...with all the foreign kids attending American universities, how long will that last?
The ex employees will be able to start a business buying cheap Chinese CD players at The Great Wall Mart for $30 and resell them on Ebay for $32.50.
Buying bananas from Costa Rica is a socialist plot. Got it. One pays 99 cents/pound and gets nothing but a peel that turns brown.
My father-in-law came to America with no English, a pregnant wife and young daughter (the present Mrs. Warchild), and 26 cents. He made himself a millionaire within fifteen years.
I say this as a reminder to myself to shut up and work harder.
You assume that the foreign kids are smarter than the American kids. They're not. They're highly motivated and chosen from a substantial pool of high achievers, but they ain't smarter.
There can be no argument about that.
I should tell it to myself more often. Witness all the time I spend here.
One of my distant relatives came to American with about a buck, no prospects or skills. He died miserably in a tenement during the 1918 flu pandemic, literally drowning in his own blood from the broken vessels in his lungs.
I say this as a reminder to myself to take vitamins and wash my hands regularly.
FR is for sharpening one's arguments in the real world. You and I have gone at it enough; haven't you learned from said exchanges?
Besides, Freeper Foxhole is a terrific daily dose of military history.
Maybe, maybe not.
But, without all the unnecessary costs of over regulation (I realize some is needed, but not all) costs of doing business would not be as high, thus meaning lower production costs, therefore meaning lower prices to the customer (whoever or whatever that entity is)
What policies of the Bush Administration caused your misfortune. Please be specific.
Another of my relatives grew up poor in frontier Kentucky, joined the Confederate Army at a relatively late age, rose to Colonel by killing Yankees.
Then he became a lawyer and I lost all respect for him.
July 25, 2005 2:35 pm ET
Intel plans new 300mm mfg. plant for Arizona
Intel Corp. will build its next 300-millimeter wafer manufacturing plant in Chandler, Ariz., alongside existing Intel facilities, the company said Monday.
Scheduled for completion in the second half of 2007 at a cost of US$3 billion, Fab 32 will become Intel’s latest wafer fabrication plant (commonly known as a fab) to use silicon wafers measuring 300mm in diameter.
...
Intel also received some tax breaks from the Arizona government in return for making the decision to expand its operations there, Baker said. The new plant will create around 1,000 jobs in Arizona over the next several years, with up to 3,000 workers needed to help build the plant, he said.
No running over Willie! He's an FR institution, much like MurryMom (whose economic beliefs he seems to share). It wouldn't be the same place without him.
I guess we could argue about bananas if you want, but I'm less concerned about assigning a value to a bunch of bananas than I am about the effects to our nation's security of importing significant portions of vital industries (steel, electronics, computers) from a nation that has the desire and capability to destroy us.
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