Whirlpool Unveils Plans to Slash Workforce by 10% (another company closing an American plant)

Fox News ^ | 10/28/2011 | Reuters

[tobyhill]

Whirlpool Corp , the world's largest appliance maker, slashed its full-year profit forecast and said it would cut about 10 percent of its workforce in North America and Europe, to protect margins in a weak economic environment.

The maker of Maytag and KitchenAid appliances will cut more than 5,000 positions and said it would close down its plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and reduce its overall manufacturing capacity by about 6 million units.

[Diogenesis]

“Death to America. Death to capitalism.”

[org.whodat]

Thanks for the free trade agreements, GOP house. Good jobs program.

[ronnie raygun]

Cains looking better every day

[elpadre]

that is how to improve your profit margin - get mean and lean. Hopefully the 10% are all union employees, the ones who put a drag on production.

[listenhillary]

What is disgusting me is my search for new appliances and looking at features, energy use and value. GE is coming out on top.

Upright Freezer - bought GE
Water softener - bought GE
Refrigerator - Dithering (GE is on top of the list)

Sucks.

[BfloGuy]

Thanks for the free trade agreements, GOP house.

Yeah, because forcing American companies to stay here will always work out great. How about we fix what makes us uncompetitive instead of punishing Americans.

By the way. How do you explain the collapse of American heavy industry in the seventies that created the Rust Belt? That was twenty years before free trade. Could there maybe be some other causes?

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Import tariffs would de-incentivise the dismantling of American industry, by removing the cost advantage which drives the import tsunami.

The imports, drive away American jobs. And technology. And industry. And money.

Ergo: 10% unemployment. No money for defense. No space program. And no American computer industry anymore.

Even Apple outsourced production to communist China.

All of the trends are negative for America, because we have no trade policy.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Destroying US industry is not “getting mean and lean”.

Destroying US industry is getting beat.

[meyer]

Massive deregulation (real deregulation, not the BS they passed on to the electric utility industry a few years ago) and tax cuts would do more to help industry in the US than a trade war.

[Wolfie]

Amen.

Of course, there is a large contingent who think that losing American jobs is somehow good for America.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Let’s do both.

[Jack of all Trades]

Watch out for GE refrigerators. Clogging of the drain that handles the defrost water in the freezer is a chronic problem. I know a guy who works for GE, and he affirms my experience. Other than that, mine’s been great.

[Nowhere Man]

I still have a 1982 Zenith TV and a 1938 Frigidare.

[agere_contra]

Import tariffs would de-incentivise the dismantling of American industry

Tariffs would

• punish Americans who want to buy the product they prefer.

• enlarge Government (all that tariff money would go to the Fed).

• turn protected industries into parasitic welfare entities that now have no pressure to compete.

Tariffs are a socialist's wet-dream: a stealth-consumption tax that also increases the pool of voters dependent on Government.

Better yet for the Left - tariffs are thought of as 'patriotic' by those voters who don't understand the difference between welfare and industry, slavery and freedom.

[riri]

First some of them tried moving south, I think.

[agere_contra]

How does the transformation of actual jobs into protected sinecures - while increasing the burden on American citizens and enlarging American government - work out as a plus for America?

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Thanks for your concern for America.

You don’t actually live here, do you?

[USS Alaska]

There are two major impediments to American competitiveness with durable goods:

1) The highest corporate tax rate in the world

2) The most destructive, constricting set of EPA regulations in the world

3) A minor impediment is the union costs and restrictions but these can be overcome by moving to a right to work state {unless you are Boeing}.

[Angry_White_Man_Syndrome]

I think you are trying to pull the horse with a cart. Instead of using tariffs which would result in other countries making their own tariffs, we need to remove the obstacles that force the companies to manufacture overseas. Taxes and regulation is what is killing US manufacturing. Other countries know that and make it easy for companies to do business. Free trade is not the problem, over taxation and regulation are the problem.