Posted on 10/18/2002 3:58:43 PM PDT by ozone1
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:08:26 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WATERVILLE, Maine (AP) A last-ditch attempt to save the nation's last major shirt manufacturing plant ran out of steam as sewing machines came to a halt Friday at the plant whose shirts were made world-famous by the man-with-an-eyepatch logo.
C.F. Hathaway, which has been making shirts in Maine for 165 years, will go the way of Arrow and Van Heusen, once strong competitors whose shirts are now being made overseas.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Glenn said job-training programs continue to be inadequate for the garment workers, most of whom are Spanish speakers, and he called on government officials to do more for trade-displaced workers.
This is from a local newspaper article about the 1,200 more laid off garment workers here just this week (making a total of about 14,000 local jobs gone). The answers always seem to be about demanding more taxpayer-provided "help" but never to follow their jobs back into Mexico which is where these people came from in the first place.
Understanding how the transactions conducted on that POS station are networked, deconstructed and used by Central or Regional operations staff to fashion purchasing, warehousing, inventory planning and merchandising strategies IS a skill. Knowing how that business operates is a skill. Merchandising psychology is a science and an art. Understanding what items affect the store's P&L most favorably, which items deliver traffic, what items comprise what volume and what margin at what time of day is BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL.
Retail gurus know how to conduct commerce. They're damn good.
No one is trying to do anything bad to you here. I just do not understand how you can love this (or any other country) if the profit is your primary objective.
You said that you are in the "richest, safest, healthiest and most prosperous free" country. Is it the reason for your "love"? What if this country becomes poorer, less safe, healthy and prosperous?
This is exactly what I meant, people who "love" something or somebody because it is profitable to them will "love" their country or parents until the moment when help or sacrifice is needed. Then they go to the greener pastures.
Like the Phoenix, they can rise again if they desire.
I have trust that all the workers will eat tonight, they will put gas in their car, and they will find some other way to support the needs of themselves and their family
Seems like a good time to do a more thorough and introspective search IMO.
You can classify my views as social conservative. I think that free-marketeers are not any better than socialists. For me family, religion and nation comes before the market and profit.
The article failed to mention where the plant is moving "To"...any idea?
SR
Without income, without means ... there's no security.
Nothing is more important than water, food, shelter and defending the lives of our family and friends.
There's no food without money. There's no shelter without income. There's no community or nation without the taxes levied on income. If an employer can't earn a profit, he can't provide a job. Profit is at the very heart and sould of our freedom, security and remarkable enlightenment. Profit is a human desire, it shows success, skill and acumen.
The best cave man, the best hunter and leader, warranted the best cuts of flesh and ripest fruits. That's profit. He's the best, he works the hardest, he studies his hunting approach continuously, he adapts and innovates and perfects his skill.
Not much has changed. The people who excel in business - any important goal in life - break down their work process, assess their performance, and tweak a new approach or outlook with the overriding goal of providing win-win value. Daily.
Nobody is going to be a third generation taconite miner in the lifetime womb of the steelworker union anymore. That's that. Show your wares, they better have some value add or the Somalis, Hondurans, Mexicans, Thai and Russian newbies will pass you by. Your call.
They work together the best. The rotten economy we're heading into is the global economy. Quick profits of the 90s are now poofing into thin air. It's going to get worse as more and more unemployed Americans can't afford to buy the cheap foreign goods Walmart and Target have to offer. The Mexicans and Chinese can't afford them either. The stock market isn't doing well in spite of all the promises made, our 401K plans won't provide much for our retirements and neither will Social Security.
When's enough enough? At some point you have to tell the civil servants and pols who are crafting this policy that you are mad as hell..
It's your job to recruit neighbors friends and family to systematically identify the entites, processes and authority under which the policy was crafted, the total menu and cost of services available to criminal tresspassers, and why are criminal aliens entitled to one penny of taxpayer money? It's a political puzzle, you gotta use the political and judicial system to solve it.
I'll bet the authority comes from some bench ruling in California, and every state agency adopted the policy, and no AG or County Attorney bothered to challenge the ruling. That's unacceptable.
That's the whole point the employeers are investing and creating the jobs overseas. Everybody can't be a lawyer,politician or computer hacker. Yes we can compete with uneducated mexicans fresh across the border if you want to work for $6.00 an hour.
As for fair taxes there wasn't any income tax until 1929. The government's money came from those pesky tariffs on foreign goods that enabled american workers to compete with cheap foreign labor and products and produce the highest standard of living in the world. This is what free trade ablolished.
How the heck can you fight a war against people who make the very things you need to defend yourself with. We all know who is responsible for 9/11 where the people really come from and where they get their money. We know why our country critizies Israel for doing the same thing that we are doing it's because we need the oil. If we didn't Israel would be given a free hand and our country would have already made a parking lot out of Saudi Arabia.
.Big business has invested billions of dollars overseas in countries that are hostile to our very way of life and none of our political leaders are not going to do one thing to them if it's going to upset their bottom line.
The man who lives in one country and invest's his money in the countries of his enemies just so he can increase his profit margin is a fool.
Not in textiles. Productivity without profit is useless.
We're open for business, world wide. If Laotians want to make shirts for $14, I'll cede them that buisness and I'll pay that for their work. We outsource the production of disposable cameras, electronic devices, televisions and cheap knick knacks and toy stuff. We make a lot of stuff that pays for a lot of jobs and competes best in class in the market. Boeing. Toro. Anheuser Busch. Mars. Emerson. J&J. P&G. Medtronic. Ford Motor. Northrop Grumman. Dell. TI. Bechtel. DuPont. Merck. Eaton. SuperValu. American Airlines. Etc. Etc. Etc. Makin' shit that people pay real money to have.
I think that there is another word for that.
I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed almost overnight I told my co- workers the same thing could happen here. I alsi told them that the way jobs where going overseas the same could happen to us. They laughed and said that our plant and the plant next door where two of the largest in the world and we made our products cheaper and better than any one in the U.S.,which was true.
This was nine years ago. I'm now retired. The plant next door shut down about a year ago 3900 top paying jobs not counting the support businesses in the area our plant had 4200 good paying good benefit jobs. There's 700 left with an uncertain future. These plants where in the area for almost 50 years and they weren't clothing. The jobs went to Red China. Now our defence department is considering replacing our cruise missle with the Sunburn one from Red China.
It's not me I'm worried about I had a good job that gave me a good retirement it's the younger people and our country's future that bothers me. The only thing that's staved off hard times so far has benn the fact that instead of one member of the family working to pay taxes and make a decent living for their family like I did ,is that now it takes both husband and wifes just to makes ends meet and these are people with the same or better education than I had.
The good paying jobs just aren't there. Our government continues to grow and needs more from it's people and the people continue to need more from the government. Something is going to give sooner or later.
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