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Posted on 04/05/2004 8:12:23 AM PDT by FourPeas
Hans Straberg wants his new refrigerator to be a hit in America.
"We think this is a great country," the Electrolux CEO said as he unveiled the $2,500, techno-sleek model at a Chicago trade show.
To make its grand entrance even grander, the stainless steel, side-by-side refrigerator will arrive in New York City's harbor June 25 aboard the regal Queen Mary II.
"Because we are a first-class brand, we want to enter into North America in a first-class way," said Straberg, whose company is based in Stockholm, "like we arrived in the '20s -- by boat."
The refrigerator already has made its mark in America -- a month ago, the first units rolled out of Greenville, where refrigerators have been made for a century.
But in a year or so, Electrolux will shutter the plant and shift production to Mexico.
The plight of the 2,700 workers left behind has drawn national and international media attention, making Greenville a poster child of the United States' shrinking industrial base.
But such gritty details were not brought up at the weekend K/BIS kitchen and bath show in Chicago's McCormick Place as Straberg rallied a throng of opening-day admirers.
Designer Thom Filicia, a star of TV's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," was brought in to add star power to the glittering unveiling of ranges, dishwashers and the top-echelon refrigerators now made in Greenville.
Standing at the base of a two-story replica of the Queen Mary cruise ship, Straberg and Filicia raised their champagne glasses of orange juice and christened nine new Icon products, the company's premier line bearing the Electrolux name for the first time in North America.
In Greenville, residents were barely aware of the glitzy debut of the town's No. 1 product. Mike Huckleberry, restaurant owner, marveled at the idea of TV celebrities and the Queen Mary used to pitch the refrigerators while 2,700 workers were absorbing the news that they were too expensive to keep on the payroll.
"Hans is unveiling a $2,500 line in Chicago, champagne and all? And they're playing it up real big? Isn't that interesting," said Huckleberry, whose outrage at the plant closing has fueled his decision to run for Congress.
The first shipment of Icon refrigerators left the Greenville plant last month, said Bob Cunningham, vice president of refrigerators and freezers for Electrolux North America.
Another built-in refrigerator is still on the drawing boards, but will also eventually be initially produced in Greenville and later shifted to Mexico.
The start-up of the new line faced fewer glitches in Greenville than the 2001 launch of side-by-side refrigerators, Cunningham said. The company took a $140 million charge that year for missed deliveries, overtime and loss of goodwill. This time, engineers set up a separate, smaller assembly line to work out the kinks before trying full-scale production, he said.
He downplayed the difficulties of building a new product in a plant expected to close in less than 18 months.
"The workers continue to build a quality product," Cunningham said. Electrolux has added 200 employees to staff a third shift in Greenville.
Some white-collar employees have been given the chance to move to other sites. So far, six engineers have accepted transfers to the South Carolina plant and technical center, Cunningham said.
George Bosanic, Greenville's city manager who led the futile charge to save the plant, said he had few questions left for the Swedish appliance maker. He wondered where the Mexico plant would open. And when.
"Is the November 2005 date still in place?" he said.
Yes, Cunningham said Friday. So far ...
Business hasn't been bad for the company's U.S. appliance sector. Production was up 10 percent last year and the U.S. side of the refrigerator business is turning a profit. The problem in Greenville, the company said, is that the expenses for labor and operating the aging plant made the site too expensive by the corporation's standards.
By December, manufacturing of the top-freezer refrigerators will be shifted from Greenville to South Carolina. That's to make room for the Icon models until those are gradually shifted to the yet-unnamed site in Mexico. The plant's annual output of side-by-side Frigidaire models also will go there.
The two American plants combined made 1.6 million refrigerators last year, according to the company's most recent annual report.
Cunningham predicted that a final plant location in Mexico would be announced "within weeks." Community leaders in Juarez have said the company has scouted sites at that border town.
Shortly after the company revealed its plans to shutter its Frigidaire plant in Greenville, it said it would expand its technical center in Anderson, S.C.
"We already had a significant tech center in South Carolina, and it was easier, given the continued production there," Cunningham said.
Greenville is just one of the plants closed since 2001. Electrolux has trimmed more than 10,000 employees in three years, not counting the Montcalm County plant. In February, the company said it is considering closing a Swedish vacuum cleaner plant, with 500 employees, to move production to Hungary.
"We are living in a tough world," said Lars Johansson, senior vice president of communications. "It's the same problem all over."
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Hundreds of workers leave Electrolux plant for the last time (Edison, NJ)
...which is exactly why I still find my 40+ year-old Electrolux vacuum cleaner quite useful. ;)
Hmmm. . . . Swedes not willing to give their workers the same kind of pay and benefits they enjoy? Let's see, the Swedish word for "hypocrisy" is . . . hyckleri.
I find that a little ironic. My grandparents, like a lot of Swedish immigrants, came over by boat. But it wasn't first-class.
That's funny!
Are those Swedes working in the Greenville plant?
Or is that a plant that first "took jobs away" from Sweden?
C'mon, let's have a little intellectual honesty here: do you drive a Toyota, Honda, or Datsun? Watch a Japanese or Korean-made TV?
Wear clothes made in some place you couldn't even find on a world atlas?
If so, YOU are contributing to American job loss just as much as Electrolux is.
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