Posted on 09/04/2009 5:03:07 AM PDT by smokingfrog
Pratt and Whitney is one of Connecticut's largest employers, and its planning to cut hundreds of jobs. Today the state stepped in to try and save those jobs.
The Pratt and Whitney facilities on the chopping block are this jet engine repair plant in Cheshire and a smaller facility in East Hartford. Lawmakers and union officials are very clear on what's at stake.
Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Cheshire CT: A thousand jobs of high skilled workers in this state and their families. Another 2-to 4-thousand jobs around the state that depend on these proud workers.
The additional jobs would be lost at contractors who do business with Pratt. The company wants to shift the work to a non-union plant in Georgia and to Singapore and Japan where costs are cheaper. The machinists union says they've offered concessions and savings that would total nearly 70-million dollars and the company has replied to that offer.
John Harrity, Machinist's Union: Management made demands upon the workers that are simply shocking in their breadth and in how deep they want to go and that right now at the bargaining table the union is responding to those proposals by saying that in their present form they're simply unacceptable.
To give you and idea how fast this is moving legislators sent this letter to Pratt and Whitney this morning. It includes the signatures of over 2-thirds of the house and the senate. In it they ask Pratt and Whitney to hold off until the end of 2010 to make this move. That's when the union deal is up. Pratt sent a reply just a few hours later saying they just can't do that because of economic conditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at necn.com ...
It's also after the Congressional elections.
Boy, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of losing jobs, only then does the idea of tax breaks saving jobs pop up. Let’s see, union jobs are being lost in a blue state under Obamanation. Shocking.
Costs are cheaper in Japan than in Connecticut???? What's wrong with this picture,Mr Union Thug Boss?
United Technologies had made it clear when I was a contractor for them in CT 13 years ago that this was their plan. I’m actually a little surprised that they are making a pitstop in Georgia on the way to Asia.
While tax breaks etc, would be nice, they will only stall the move. I remember New Haven gave Macy’s something like $10 million to stay in downtown New Haven. That worked for a year or two, and then they moved anyway. A complete waste of money.
Doesn't look like the plan to hand out all of that stimulus (walking around) money right before the 2010 election and solidify the dems power is going to work out so well. The economic decline isn't happening as linearly as they thought.
Let’s see...
The State of Connecticut would rather stress their state budget to the tune of some $100 million in tax breaks, (which will have to be made up by raising taxes elsewhere) rather than have the Union make concessions...
Real smart....
I didn’t see “what” the incentives were. I once worked in a manufacturing plant (of 500 people at its peak) that closed. The local governments got together and promised to replace the sidewalks around the plant to the tune of approx $30,000 if the plant stayed open. Lot of good that would do. It was a high crime area and no one went out walking at lunchtime anyway. When the plan was closed anyway, the politicians said that they had offered incentives, but company management turned them down.
Non union workers in Connecticut being taxed to support higher paid, better benefited union workers.
Kind of like how TARP raised various federal insurance rates on small solvent good banks to support hooked up, financial gamboling, ‘too big to fail’ big banks.
Tax payer money to save over priced union jobs.
This is a crime.
Yes, our wonderful politicians can find some tax cuts to save union jobs, but otherwise they spit in our faces. What are they doing to save/encourage small business?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2331956/posts
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the stupidity.
Newark, NJ all the way up the Hudson, up into Pennsylvania, up I-95 to north of Boston and then sweeping west to Detroit, there are hundreds of once industrial, chemical, manufacturing cities that have internally with their remaining tax base, or pulling resources from within their state, have done the ‘taxpayer-to-government-killed-off-business/union scam’.
It’s an old story now. Decades old.
The media, reports it as if new every-time. I guess Journalism is another word for memoryless and mind wiped uncritical delivery of state power bunkum.
That's tagline material right there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.