Just curious. How many of those other companies are located in "right to work" states? How many of those operations are union shops?
Scoutmaster wrote:
Funny how Fender wasn't raided, when it uses all of that rosewood on fretboards. And how Guild wasn't raided, or the smaller luthiers like Collings, and Goodall, and Olson, and Froggy Bottom, and . . .
Jim Olson makes all of his own guitars in Minnesota and I don't think he unionized himself. Bill Collings is in Austin, Texas with 50 employees; given his size, I doubt he's unionized (but the two Madi/Adi guitars I have from him are the closest things to pre-war Martins I've been able to find). Michael Millard's been building Froggy Bottoms in Vermont for about 40 years. Guild moved from Washington to Connecticut in 2008.
I think it's grasping to try and find some conspiracy. I could list another twenty luthiers who weren't raided pretty easily - a lot in the Tennessee/Virginia area. Don't believe Gallagher was raided - Doc Watson's guitar of choice for many, many years.
Gibson's had an abundance of legal problems. It was charged with price-rigging by the FTC in 2009. Don't know the status of that one. Last year, Gibson had a tax lien of $450,000+. It breached the terms of a loan in 2008 by failing to submit audited financials.
And if we have any independent music dealers on here, let them tell you about the changes in how Gibson started to do business with independents about seven or eight years ago, and forced so many of its small dealers to drop the brand, leaving it to Guitar Center and other big box operators.