Posted on 12/28/2013 7:15:01 PM PST by Hojczyk
FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too.
About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next.
"The high-paying jobs that we have now in the area are going to shrink," said Rock, a 41-year-year-old married father of two. "If I don't find something making at least 20 bucks an hour in New York state, then I'm skipping town."
The loss of manufacturing jobs is a national trend, but New York has felt the sting more than some other states. Paul Blackley, an economics professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, said New York state lost 42 percent of manufacturing jobs from 1990 through 2006. Over the same period, Florida lost 18 percent.
Blackley said there's no single reason for New York's drop, but business costs and an older infrastructure likely play a role.
"I think your tax climate, your labor costs, your old capital are probably three of the biggest factors, not only in this specific move, but a lot of the moves that you see out of New York state," he said.
The GE plant has sat by a narrow stretch of the Hudson River in this town of 6,000 since World War II. It makes electrical capacitors for power transmission systems and industrial uses.
(Excerpt) Read more at therepublic.com ...
No. They don't.
Oh yes, and then after ten years of that, you have high taxes to look forward to.
The only thing that fixes liberalism is no liberalism.
Gee!
Hillary must of missed this area of upstate NY during all of her “listening tours”
After Her Thighness became Senator, didn’t NY state share in the largess of all the government spending; didn’t she arrange to send a bunch of billions to NY from the $ Trillion porkulous stimulus package??
The real story is that these jobs are moving to a lower cost STATE, not another country. Caapacitor mfg is not high-tech, and could have easily gone to Mexico or China. Kudos to GE.
I see those NY friendly to jobs ads here in Texas. They want to give a 10 year / “no tax break” to new businesses, where Texas has no state taxes. Must be DUmmies running those ads.
The “new New York”? Is it narrated by Bill deBlasio, Hillary Clinton, and “NYSafe” himself...A Cuomo?
What a trifecta! But, as one NY’er confided to me, it would be frightening to be around those “rednecks” down south.
I hear that the Repub party thinks it needs to be less conservative. Visit NY state sometime and see what that gets you.
Thanks for your good post, tflabo.
Its pretty likely that Toyota will be going union before long since they’ve been negotiating back and forth with the unions for a while now.
You won’t find a Ford, Chrysler, or GM plant that isn’t unionized in this country. In fact there isn’t a car made in this country that isn’t full of union made parts. I worked in a union shop that produced primarily parts for Cadillac and Ford but I also made Toyota parts on occasion.
The big Boeing fight in Washington state is a fight with one particular union but most of their union suppliers are unaffected. My cousin works on a Boeing contract in a UAW shop here in Michigan.
http://www.uaw.org/page/general-motors
The last shop I worked in I had worked for many years before when it wasn’t unionized. When I became a foreman during my second employment there I asked the general manager about the circumstances that had brought the union in. He said the company (Collins and Aikman) had invited the union in. In part it was a means of heading off the UAW attempt to unionize and the AFL-CIO had been willing to negotiate a better deal. He said it also cut down on tons of paperwork kind of like hiring through a temp service.
The manager also pointed out that 300 employees could produce a lot of grievances and it was easier to deal with a union steward once a week rather than having people lined up outside HR every day.
I figured the EPA had something to do with it.
LOL OK if you say so.
And whatever you do, don’t allow any fracking. It may create manufacturing jobs. We don’t want to upset Pennsylvania.
Florida’s a right to work State - and we don’t have an income tax...
Anyone know what part of Florida they’re moving to?
“GE basically made up their minds to vacate New York State after the state and the EPA pushed them to do a $500M dredging project to clean up PCBs in the Hudson River from the Hudson Falls plant. “
Sheer insanity. The PCB’s were long ago locked into sediment in the river. Now they are being all disturbed again and toxic sediment is being trucked over and buried on land.
Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky boast the strongest auto-manufacturing industries in the country, according to newly released rankings from the corporate news magazine Business Facilities. Tennessee took the top spot on the combined strength of a General Motors plant in Spring Hill, a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, and a Nissan plant in Smyrna; all three factories are expanding operations in response to growing worldwide demand for cars and trucks. Alabama narrowly finished second – the Cotton State is home to Mercedes-Benz, Honda, and Hyundai plants, all of which are also ramping up production. And Kentucky finished third, thanks to growing Ford and Toyota operations. (The rankings, of “Automotive Manufacturing Strength,” were not based on just overall auto production, but took into account industry trends, growth potential, and current production statistics.)
All three top states have right-to-work laws, which prohibit employers from barring non-unionized workers, tending to weaken unions substantially.
U.S. Auto Industry Booms in Right-to-Work South
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354430/us-auto-industry-booms-right-work-south-will-allen
The article says Clearwater.
The southern states use the community colleges to help recruit business…BMW went some place down south… and the state educated the employees to BMW standards..Florida not so much..
I never thought of it that way, but it makes some sense.
I happen to work for a fortune 500 manufacturing company in a non-union shop, and I can't believe the whiners and complainers.
These folks have a good paying job (27 to 40 bucks an hour) in a good environment, and all many of them can do is complain.
I think the problem is they haven't worked in a real hellhole and have no idea how good they have it.
I certainly don't envy the HR people with what they have to put up with.
It might just be easier to deal with one union thug.
Funny thing is, I have a close relative who is a union steward. He can't believe the complainers where he works either.
He's a conservative, and gets along fine with the boss.
Problem is he can't really be outwardly friends with the guy or the whiners will have something more to whine about.
Jeff Immelt (GE CEO) is a big Obumma supporter.
So, on the one hand, these major US companies support political liberals, then they make decisions to vacate states controlled by...political liberals.
It makes no damn sense to me.
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