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.
I say that he should maybe get together with a bunch of other table guys, maybe even the stool guys, and share the expenses of opening overseas markets.
The company I own had a similar experience. We had this - what we thought - hot idea for an invention, and went to a patent attorney. He charged us a lot of money to research it and advise us; in the end we decided it was not profitable and didn't pursue it.
Was the money we paid the attorney wasted? Nope. Kept us from spending even more money and losing it. Now, we DID budget that money, i.e., we incorporated it into our business plan.
Ya gotta spend money to make money.
...anyway, I'm just throwing ideas out there. I've gotten tired of all the complaining with few solutions offered.
I'm out. Gotta go to work...
Hey, no $hit, Gunga Din!!!
Do YOU want to work for the wages and benefits paid in India???
I don't know if the first part of this is true or not, prolly not as I just pulled it out of thin air.
Well that's not exactly a surprise...
but my hat's off to you for at least being refreshingly honest about it!
Union demands eventually cause companies to close up shop and move elsewhere. I have seen it in my family.
Good thing you worked hard to get one of those non-union high-tech professional jobs in Information Technology and computer programming!!!
uhhhhh...... OOOOOOPS!!!
Nevermind....
They will find it nearly impossible to find comparable jobs at comparable pay. I don't know what they will do.
I'm going to try to read up on some of these issues. I fail to see how service jobs are going to be good for our country in the long run.
Maybe a third viable party will emerge, but the powers that be will do everything in their power to maintain the status quo.
Regarding the lobbyists. They have the collective clout and money to back them. Money always talks. Individual voices with no political clout are ignored because we, the little people, are no threat to any of them.
I'd like to see lobbies done away with. They are causing much harm, and the legislation that is going through the house and the senate, no matter which party, much does not represent the voice of the people. Lobbies and big money interests are controlling us, and it is we who should be controlling them, by we, I mean the people and not the government.
We aren't allowed to vote on very critical issues, just vote for the people who make the decisions for us and which issues are swept under the carpet every election cycle.
No wonder unemployment is so low - the middle class is having to work 2-3 jobs just to survive.
Not anymore. I've been home for over 7 months now....
funny funny guy
Really?
Teddy might've been a man's man, but he betrayed his country to keep Taft (Protectionist when the globalist Republicans decided it was time to end tariffs) from winning the presidency and gave us Wilson, the puppet president who gave us WW1, (after campaigning with the slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War") the income tax and tried to give us the League of Nations.
You meant how to move the production to these countries in order to hire cheap labor and to distribute it in USA?
You got it wrong. The question is, how can he give the boot to this "half dozen people working for him" in America (whom he knows personally for a long time) and persuade them to train low paid Chinese in China to take their jobs?
And how to maintain the control over this outsourced production while maintaing the quality and keeping the US buyers happy ("high end" might get lower) and preventing Chinese from taking over/copying his product.
I guess in smaller scale business these problems are more difficult or maybe more visible.
Nice. And the fat A$$ baby boomers who gave us the likes of both Bill and Hilary Clinton, Jane Fonda and Michael Moore have screwed the pooch for us Gen Xers who will have to support them throughout their retirement because they didn't have the guts to finally toss out social security and do the right thing.
Don't you hate it when someone who has never met you lumps you in to a stupid group?
As a matter of fact, I do........which is why I used his/her particular tactic against me right back at him/her.
I'm one of the tweenies.....I'm really not a boomer, and definitely not an Xer.............but I was brought up well enough to know that insulting or personally attacking someone for no reason does not fall into the realm of common courtesy, most especially when you do not know the person you are speaking to, let alone their age.
Ha ha ha he he he he, this is so funny! You are a great joker. Unfortunately it is sad also.
Yeah well, I'm sure you think yourself superior both to myself and anyone who'd enjoy a tv show for relaxation - like some whole internet site of "geeks" - perhaps like this one (...)
Evidently you have plenty of time to be here. And in the span of time you've been on, you could have written a review if you could organize a thought that wasn't a bash because you needed to feel superior or something. In short, "yeah, right."
Thanks for the feedback. And Glad you like BSG. I started writing the reviews to keep me busy during the large amount of downtime at night after job hunting during the day back when I had no job. Got a bit more complicated squeazing the time in to do the reviews which is why I'm 2 weeks behind right now. But, will figure something out ;) May have to clone myself so I can afford to live and have some fun lol. I've missed the airing of the episode on it's regular night for the past 2 weeks and had to watch it after everyone else which kinda sucks; but, ...
No, I meant how to sell U.S. products in these countries. We have tons of small to mid-sized firms making unique products that don't have the expertise for breaking into international markets.
There are a lot of jobs and products that can't be outsourced. Cheap manufacturing only works for products that are produced in large quantities and there are tons of U.S. companies producing unique, high quality products that required skilled labor. The trick is expanding the market for these companies...
I know it was a really long post.... but you overlooked this paragraph where the phony Clinton internet-bubble jobs have now been replaced by real jobs. Read it carefully:
In the past 24 months 3.5 million more Americans have found work, which is the equivalent of a new job for every worker in the entire state of Indiana. Every single job that was lost during the bursting of the technology bubble and stock market collapse of 2000-01 has been matched by a new job, often in a new industry. As the nearby chart shows, the bottom of the jobs recession hit in mid-2003--and the recovery began at the very point that the Bush marginal-rate tax cuts were enacted into law.
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Isn't it great that we have created more than 40 million jobs under both Democratic and Republican presidents while the Europeans and Japanese combined haven't had 20 million?
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