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?)

[PackerBoy]

Employment lawyer here ... this happens a LOT.

Basically, many of the emloyees do not believe the company will close its doors; they think it's a bluff. Others don't care, as they would not mind receivig unemployment compensation and staying home for a while. This vote was closer than many I have seen.

I once closed a business because the Teamsters would not negotiate a wage reduction. The union's bargaining team did not even blink when we announced the closing.

[BudgieRamone]

No doubt it was foolhardy to vote themselves out of a job, however that is something that will have to determined in the future. The possibility of losing jobs is there, and while I don't know the specifics, my guess is that the higher ups in the company saw a "money saving" way to get a bonus for themselves at the expense of the floor workers. The way this works is they plead with the union and beg and whine snivel etc, that they don't have enough money and would the workers please take this important pay cut to save jobs. Meanwhile no one on the board takes a cut, No one in upper management takes a cut, the worker is expected to feel the pain of economic downturn and as soon as this scam for cutting pay by union agreement takes place, that "saved" money goes right into the CEO and his cronies pockets.

Now, I don't like unions nor do I support what they do ( I was a union steward--the whole thing is rife with corruption) But in this case where it is not mentioned whether the "In charge" folks have felt the pain, I think it is rather unfair to slam these workers for making a judgment on what they percieve as the truth.

Also, I must add, what does everyone have against a worker making a high wage for what they do? it seems that every time the union is mentioned, Many folks assume that these guys are slobs who sit around complaining they don't make enough money. That, from my limited experience sounds like a paper pusher attitude. They can't stand the fact that a person makes a good living wage without having to shuffle paper work. True there are folks that seem to be protected by the unions, but if MANAGEMENT knew how to do their jobs, the deadwood could be eliminated.

let the flaming begin. :-P

[elbucko]

The union's bargaining team did not even blink when we announced the closing.

I belive many union thugs think the Feds will come in (sooner or later) and bail them out, somehow.

[SpeakLittle_ThinkMuch]

"deadwood could be eliminated"

539 just have been.

[Timesink]

539 just have been.

More than that. The plant employs several hundred nonunion employees as well.

[Intolerant in NJ]

"You never can tell when they’re telling the truth," he said, referring to the company’s management. "They have lied to us."...bet he'll believe the padlock on the front door of the plant......

[GalaxieFiveHundred]

Sixteen dollars an hour = $33,280 per year. In a really cheap city you can buy a house for that much.

I pine for that ratio. Here in sunny Southern California, that would barely be 5% down on an entry level, 3 bed fixer upper in a nice area. I wonder what the commute is like between LA and West Virginia?

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

The day the plant locks out the erstwhile employees is when in the cold light of morning they will sober up and make most of them begin the beg and puke routine.

We want another chance, we didn't realize it was for real, but I thought they were only bluffing. Please, please, we will take a 1/2 cut in wages.

Stupid fools all. I worked at Reynolds Metals aluminum extrusion plant in Phoenix, AZ about 40 years ago. The great USSW held sway with a iron fist and the things that went on no one outsider would believe. That huge complex which employed 4,500 has since been razed to the ground and is no more.

[Conservababe]

In the early seventies, a glass plant closed because of union demands in Shreveport, Louisiana.

When I moved three years later, a man still walked in front of the factory with a picket sign, everyday.

How sad, I thought, that he could not accept reality.

[SoDak]

Un-freaking-believable. Enjoy unemployment, idiots. Way to look after your families.

[gonzo]

"...United Steelworkers of America..."

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

'Special Olympics' is right.............FRegards

[Buckwheats]

Bet you can get that bike really cheap by next spring.

[Imal]

International operations were not affected by the bankruptcy.

Here's the key sentence I was looking for. If anyone wonders why manufacturing jobs are leaving the U.S., this article lays it all out clearly.

Don't worry about Special Metals, they'll be just fine.

The Chinese will pick up the slack.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Perhaps the workers hate their bosses so much that they are willing to be out of a job on the off-chance cutting a boss's pension.

[KAUAIBOUND]

So several hundred nonunion employees also lose their jobs because of the stupid majority in the union - there sure is nothing like a non-right-to-work state for "protecting" the rights of the worker.

[drlevy88]

And for sending more American business and its associated expertise and know-how, to China. What geniuses voted for this?

[jim_trent]

I have gone through two plant closings myself (as salaried technical management). In each case, the Union had convinced the workers that the Management was lying and the plant would not close. They said that the management kept two sets of books.

One they showed to the Union (which showed a loss) and one that they showed to the higher-ups to get their bonus' (which showed a profit). I remember one of the top Union guys leaving the final meeting with management with a smirk on his face. The plant was closed down a few months later.

Then the Union said that it was only a temporary shutdown to scare everyone. It would be open again in 90 days. After 90 days passed, it became 6 months. Then a year. The plant is still closed and empty 15 years later.

[thinktwice]

Another boarded up company for unemployed union workers to proudly point to whlle telling tourists ... "We struck it shut."

That's exactly what a person told me about a major boarded-up business in the heart of Ketchican, Alaska

[Toirdhealbheach Beucail]

Forgive me for asking a seemingly stupid question, but what benefit does the Union derive from convincing employees to put themselves out of work? If the unions need dues, how does this serve their purpose?

[WI Conservative 4 Bush]

That's a very good question. I don't know a lot about the inner workings of unions, but I do recall hearing statistics that cumulative union membership has been steadily declining for years. Lemmings and all.

[hchutch]

It's greedy CEOs, it's outsourcing, it's the illegals...

Am I missing any of the standard paleo-con cries?

[eleni121]

Your whole response is full of stereotypes about "paper pushers" and innuendoes about the "boards" and the management not taking cuts.

Is that what you learned in your years as a union steward - class envy?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

"Its the merchants" is the new paleo code word for those who use gentile baby blood to make matzoh....

[Texas_Dawg]

It's greedy CEOs, it's outsourcing, it's the illegals...

Oh, and you forgot the latest category... "Merchants".

At one time or another on FR, I have had not only job losses (I call them "firings") and home foreclosures blamed on greedy CEOs, outsourcing and illegals, but divorces, marital separations, inner-city drug-dealing and murder and even one guy's friend's suicide.

Man, those silly Mexicans are far more powerful than I ever thought.

[gaspar]

When I was going to University I worked as a machinist at a plant that hired some 90 people. The pay was terrific and paid my tuition, room, books, etc. Unfortunately, the workers went out on strike three years in a row. The company warned that if it occured again they would close their doors and return to Illinois. The workers struck, the business was closed.

Such things have happened thousands of times over the years, and It never ceases to amaze me when the American worker gleefully commits suicide.

[Texas_Dawg]

Such things have happened thousands of times over the years, and It never ceases to amaze me when the American worker gleefully commits suicide.

They don't run their own companies for good reason.

[jim_trent]

I don't think the local Union people think that far ahead. From my experience, the people who get elected to local Unions are the most radical people in the Union.

[hchutch]

Yep. You know, I think David Frum was right about the paleo-cons. The second paragraph is quite interesting, IMHO. It's why I have a lot of suspicion about the outcry over outsourcing.

"Francis advocated a politics of uninhibited racial nationalism — a politics devoted to the protection of the interests of what he called the 'Euro-American cultural core' of the American nation. He argued that the time had come for conservatives to jettison their old commitment to limited government: A 'nationalist ethic,' he wrote in 1991, 'may often require government action.'

"So, Chronicles advocated protectionism for American industry and restrictions on nonwhite immigration. It defended minimum-wage laws and attacked corporations that moved operations off-shore."
http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum031903.asp

[Texas_Dawg]

You know, I think David Frum was right about the paleo-cons.

Of course. It just took someone finally willing to take the heat and say it in a major forum. (And he took tons of heat from them.)

[Texas_Dawg]

"So, Chronicles advocated protectionism for American industry and restrictions on nonwhite immigration. It defended minimum-wage laws and attacked corporations that moved operations off-shore."

How many times have I seen on FR (and in real life) that when pushed hard enough on the issue, especially when presented with the economic facts of what they support, do these paleos eventually get so flustered or angry that the truth behind their "economic" proposals comes out? Too many times to count.