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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.
Walmart has something to do with loss of manufacturing jobs so I would tend to disagree that it has nothing to do. It may have no direct tie to this particular loss. On that I would agree. They are part of the problem - which is different from saying they are the problem. The German people were part of the problem of the third reich. They were enablers. That didn't make them the planners, schemers, etc. They went along with the public rhetoric of the politicos. Walmart is an enabler and active participant in undermining the US job base by using foriegn labor rates to compete local labor out of their own market.. which is no different in essence than what our forefathers warred with a King over and wrote our constitution over. You can tap dance all you like and won't get around that central point. We're being scuttled right now by the very thing that the forefathers protested, rebelled against and ultimately founded this country rejecting - subverting local labor via dumping and unfair competition.
The loss of US manufacturing is a forgone conclusion when Walmart can break a walstreet top producer like RubberMade(sp) in the fashion that they did. They destroyed a top rated manufacturer with their games. When you're powerful enough to do that and then choose to import 60 plus percent of your manufactured goods for sale from china because of wage/labor rates and use that to compete directly against local market pricing, thereby using dumping to subvert the local market - you are part of the problem.
As for the union, that's a whole other topic. Whether the closing was voted on by the rank and file is immaterial to the reason the location had to close.
I don't need to buy a clue, I got one. I can see the relationships of cause and effect clearly and present them clearly because I'm not worried about what someone else will think about it or whether it will hurt my position or not.
In essence, I don't care about anything in it but the American people. Many of you have to defend this crap because you feel threatened at party level or want to see it happen because you're profitting from it and don't care who is damaged while you take money baths. IE, as long as you get yours, you don't care about anyone else. Politics in this country isn't about getting your way. It's about doing what's right for America. Until you rediscover that idea, ya'll have no place in politics.
Many of the jobs that moved to Mexico have moved east -- to China. Manufacturing always follows cheap labor and right now the cheapest labor around is in Asia.
The intelligence level displayed by most of these people posting is abysmal.
are you aware that Mexico is losing manufacturing jobs and by the way so is China
Would farm payrolls and self-employment show in the 207,000 jobs created? I'm not being difficult, just trying to get a handle on the numbers.
I don't see him exploiting other's misery. I see you, however, almost shouting with glee at him.
whatever you say....
again I say it is a matter of perspective....
But wow, all those burger flipper jobs that have been created in the past 3 years, its amazing that we don't LIVE in a McDonald's or have one next door....
I would contend that your position would be pretty good irrespective of who was in office. I do facilities planning for the Army - part owner of a small business. While I am better off now than under Clinton, it has more to do with timing and "non-economic" circumstance (i.e., I gained experience and reputation) than with any economic action or inaction.
You call this success?
I went from a salaried "good job" to working two part time jobs with no benefits making less than half my salary and have no time and can barely pay my bills.
No, that's why I cited them differently.
I'm not being difficult,...
This one's on me.
5.56mm
Sheesh, first day with my new brain.
5.56mm
You're confusing politics and economics. The strength and guiding principle of a free market system is every working toward their own best self-interest. That is what Wal-Mart does along with every other company in the nation. Quite literally, that's their job.
Politics, such as it is, should keep certain aspects of the free market system in check. For instance, certain business practices are illegal, such as insider trading, killing the competition, and minimum wage, etc.
Well, if it harms the UAW (and unions in general) in any way, I'm ok with it.
well I was able to go to Iraq, which was a result indirectly of Bush going to war, but I would have ended up in Afghanistan otherwise...
I was able to gain experience and training with my company and now since I have moved back up into Ohio, I have seniority....
That said, before the war happened, thanks to the economic downturn and 9/11 (both the fault of Clinton in the end), my job in Columbus was going away and I just got lucky.
I would have landed on my feet, but I took advantage of my opportunities.
Besides my wife went from being a housewife to being an office manager in a week. you can't tell me the jobs aren't out there because they are....
Thanks. I'm breaking in a brain myself.
That's corporate semantics for, they need to lower wages to match those overseas and pay Americans 27 cents an hour. That's something you can't say openly to an American audience if you value your hide. So, you couch it in semantics that ultimately otherwise have no real meaning. It's a clever way of saying, try as you might, that America can compete with forieng labor by going out of business.. or by some other etherial non-substantial means which we've yet to discover in modern science or labor practice. You can't undercut lower production costs overseas in a tariff free situation unless you employ overseas labor yourself or destroy the wage level in your own market and impoverish workers.
The reason people have to be strongarmed in Congress and can't talk plainly about this in public (or will not) is that the public would lynch these guys in a second if they understood all the implications and most want to anyway. Congress and the president have become quite unpopular and of the blood boiling type around my neck of the woods. People understand it here very plainly.
The king of England Killed colonial tariffs on product shipped from England such that the King used lower imperial cost to dump product on the colonial market and subvert the market - putting colonials out of work. That's what fueled the revolt against the King. It was all about the king playing games with Tarrifs to subvert the colonial market by undercutting local pricing.. and with no representation. The King would not listen to reason. Congress is now the King and doing the same thing to America that the King did. Tell me.. do you expect a different result this time?
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