Special Metals contract rejected (Union Votes Down Contract, Co. Likely To File Ch 7 Within Days)

The Herald-Dispatch ^ | August 25, 2003 | Jim Ross

[Timesink]

HUNTINGTON -- Workers at the Special Metals Corp. nickel alloy plant in Huntington rejected a proposed contract offer Monday that their union leadership and company executives said was necessary to keep the plant open.

The vote, announced at 8:30 p.m. after a full day of voting, was 236 workers for the new contract and 303 against it.

[Timesink]

This is the largest manufacturer left in the city. The union members were told flat-out that if they voted this contract down, the company will almost certainly immediately file for total liquidation, putting everyone in the factory, as well as at four other plants around the nation, out of jobs. And they voted it down anyway.

Goodbye jobs! And goodbye Huntington! The city, already a financial basket case, will not be able to survive the loss of a company that employs roughly one out of every 50 citizens.

(I must also note that Gannett shows off the quality of its employee hires in this article. See that "Click here for more" button? Wave your mouse over it and look where it points to: A page called "Special Medals." I suppose I can see where they would tend to make such a mistake, given that most of their employees are regular participants in the Special Olympics.)

[sam_paine]

My gosh. Straight off of Page 683 or so in Atlas Shrugged. Isn't it?

[KevinDavis]

Also thank the union members for putting themselves out of work.

[Go Gordon]

If the workers refuse to work, the company will likely close the plant, Dean said.

What a bunch of buffoons. Lets see, cut in pay of a buck and a half, or zero. Hmmm, tough decision. Okay, I vote no.

The average pay per person last year was over $50k. Taking a $3k cut versus having no job seems like a no brainer to me.

[Marauder]

Wasn't there a fable about a scorpion riding on the back of a frog to get across the river? The frog was reluctant, so the scorpion promised not to sting him, because, "Why would I want to drown both of us?"
But halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, and as he was sinking, the frog said, "Why? Now we'll both drown."
The scorpion said, "I know. I just couldn't help myself."

[Mo1]

Many workers who had said they were going to vote against the contract said it was a matter of trust. They had stopped believing the company was honest with them, and they had lost faith in their union’s negotiating committee

So basically they just screwed themselves out of a jobs over a cut of $1.50 cut?

[Timesink]

bump for bump lists

[jra]

Someone tell me this CANNOT really be true.

For the members to accept bad advice en masse simply to make a point to their employer, when the product of a "No" vote is the loss of all their jobs...unfathomable.

[MrNatural]

It really is something right out of Atlas Shrugged; all the workers products of the public school system, believing that the world owes them a 'decent wage'...

[Timesink]

So basically they just screwed themselves out of a jobs over a cut of $1.50 cut?

Yup. To put this into perspective (it's even more pathetic than you think): The average wage at that plant is $16/hr. And Forbes magazine determined that Huntington, West Virginia, is the second-cheapest city in the entire United States in which to live.

[norton]

539 union members out of work to prove a point.

Ah...Yup!

It's Bush's fault.

[Dick Vomer]

A Message to Garcia

---

(I have not placed a background on this page in hopes that it will be easier to read and/or print out. Enjoy it and remember it was originally published in March 1899.)

---

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba - no one knew where. No mail or telegraph could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly.

What to do!

Someone said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing - "carry a message to Garcia!"

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man - the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office -six clerks are within your call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio."

Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task?

On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I hired for that?

Don't you mean Bismarck?

What's the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Shan't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?

What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him find Garcia - and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.

Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Corregio is indexed under the C's, not in the K's, but you will smile sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up yourself.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker in his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine times out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate - and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

"You see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factory.

"Yes, what about him?"

"Well, he's a fine accountant, but if I'd send him to town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and, on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for."

Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the "down-trodden denizen of the sweat shop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment," and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away "help" that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, this sorting is done finer - but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He can not give orders, and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, "Take it yourself."

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in your pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold the line in dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds - the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and, having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes.

I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for a day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village - in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed, and needed badly - the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

[Mo1]

It's Bush's fault.

Of course it is .. everything is his fault

[PogySailor]

Ah, but you see, this can be blamed on GWB in 2004. More grist for the Socialist-Democrat ad campaign.

[Timesink]

Yesterday's edition of the paper had an article in it about the impact this plant's closing will have on the community. It began with an anecdote about one of the plant's employees getting off his motorcycle to walk into the local hangout for plant employees. The article names the specific make and model of the bike. I just went and looked it up: The bikes cost roughly $13,000 - $15,000 each.

This is the typical employee of Special Metals who "can't handle" a lousy $1.50/hr pay cut.

[Gaelic]

And they vote for Sen Byrd

[SC Swamp Fox]

Who would have guessed that Galt's Gulch was on the other side of the Pacific Ocean?

[Mo1]

This is the typical employee of Special Metals who "can't handle" a lousy $1.50/hr pay cut.

My husband doesn't have a union at his work .. he is in the tech area .. they didn't have any pay raises for the last couple of years .. but it helped save some jobs

He said a lot of people from work were *itching about it .. I looked at him and said I'd rather collect a pay check then an unemployment check any day and told him to keep his mouth shut

[Concentrate]

Sixteen dollars an hour = $33,280 per year. In a really cheap city you can buy a house for that much. Houses in this area are 4X my annual salary. Although 10 years ago, they were only 2.5X my then salary, approximately.

[Timesink]

Additional paragraphs just tacked onto the end of the article in the last few minutes:

"Obviously, the no vote has a potentially very large negative impact on the area," Huntington Mayor David Felinton said. "It’s obviously very disappointing, but I don’t know if you can necessarily blame them for voting against it, either."

Special Metals employs 986 people at its factories at Huntington and Burnaugh in Boyd County, Ky. The company paid $52 million in local wages last year and about $23 million in pension benefits.

According to figures provided by the company, its total economic impact in the Tri-State was at least $90 million last year.

Special Metals is the world’s largest and most diversified producer of high-performance nickel-based alloys. The company has 10 production facilities in the United States and Europe, a global distribution network and 5,000 customers worldwide. International operations were not affected by the bankruptcy.

Do I really need to note that Mayor Felinton, since his party was not identified, is a RAT? And only in his late 20s? (You can actually see him hanging out behind City Hall on weekdays, smoking cigarettes with his buddies, as if he was still in 10th grade and sneaking smokes in the back of his high school?)