Posted on 07/03/2011 6:38:04 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Every working American should be dismayed by — and afraid of — what BMW is doing.
By all accounts, BMW's parts distribution warehouse in Ontario was one of the jewels of the company's system.
Supplying dealer service departments throughout Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, it received gold medals from BMW for its efficiency and employed several of the top-ranked workers in the country. In the roughly 40 years its workers had been represented by the Teamsters union, there had never been a labor stoppage.
Times being what they are, when a Teamsters committee came to the plant in early June to open negotiations over a new contract to start Sept. 1, they thought they might be asked to accept minuscule wage increases and maybe some givebacks on health coverage.
They were stunned by what they heard instead: As of Aug. 31, the plant would be outsourced to an unidentified third-party logistics company and all but three of its 71 employees laid off.
The union contract will be terminated. Some of the employees might be offered jobs with the new operator, but there are no guarantees. And no one expects the new bosses will match the existing $25 hourly scale or the health benefits provided now.
The average seniority of employees at Ontario is about 20 years; five have spent 30 years or more at Ontario or its predecessor warehouse in Carson. Of the employees to be laid off (according to a notice BMW sent the union), 27 are age 50 or older. The word that came most often to the lips of workers and their families I've talked to is "devastated."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
They can call it "Non-Union for a Day" and award the most pitiful (winner) vouchers to attend seminars on subjects like, "Union Bosses Are Not Your Friends."
They could even make it a family affair.
Miguel Carpinteyro is losing his BMW job after 14 years. Three of his children have medical
issues, and he and his wife might lose their house. (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times / July 3, 2011)
Today $25/hr. is hardly a job killing wage though I’m sure they might find someone to work for less.
“Don't cheer, boys. The poor devils are dying.” – Capt. John Philip of the USS Texas, to his crew as they watched the Spanish ship Vizcaya burn off Santiago in the Spanish American War.
lol....Hiltzik is such a little clown.
These rules, regulations and heavy taxes are hitting productivity everywhere -- has been for decades. In the article below, the writer describes a railroad and a transmission line that have been held up for decades due to studies and rules and regulations and environmentalists and lawyers. And as you can see from the lead-in, he sees that it doesn't have to be that way.
Montana: Legal gamesmanship threatens our energy future “Texas Gov. Rick Perry is able to boast about job growth under his watch, noting that over 265,000 jobs, or nearly 37 percent of the jobs created nationwide since the summer of 2009, have been created in the Lone Star state.
He credits this growth to a few simple conditions: low taxes, a regulatory climate that is fair and predictable, and a legal system that limits frivolous lawsuits. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly one-fourth of the 70 companies that left California this year relocated to Texas.
When new or relocating companies and investors survey the landscape and consider Montana, what do they see? Well, when it comes to natural-resource development, the landscape looks risky…….”
Boy that George Bush. I never knew it was a BMW he drove in the ditch?/S
Seems a shame some folks will never learn business and economics until smacked with the reality of the cold, hard facts. The reporter seems to be a dufus who really isn’t too swift on the pickup either, AND HE IS THE BUSINESS REPORTER for the LA Times! Nuff’ said...
Favorite comment from the LA Times story:
“Notice that the posts made before 6am where overwhelmingly sober assessments of how unions and Boxer et al have driven business out of California.
Now that it’s after 6 and the welfare bums and Democrat robots are stirring out of bed, the posts are predicably of the Kool aid Obomot business-is-bad variety.”
BMW realizesthat their Spartanburg S. Carolina plant is the model to emulate. No Union BS. That’s why my X3 cost less than a comparable GM SUV. Never thought I could afford to be a BMW owner until I saw the stickers on comparable american cars
Yeah, but those Spaniards did not have the power to FORCE money from my pocktet to Al Franken’s, after having stolen the money (at the point of a gun) from their employer to give to themselves and the Dem paryt to buy more votes to steal MORE of my money and MORE of my money and MORE of my money AND my GUNS, and appoint MORE federal judges to say that the US Cons. DEMANDS that Michigan use a racist system in college admissions, etc. I can sympathize with dying Spaniards — welfare begging union filth who steals money at the point of a gun to give to Obama? Nah.
I would bet a large sum of money the severance package from BMW is rather generous to it's workers.
You’re right. There is a touch of vindictiveness in some of the posts. One called these people “filth.”
I agree, but what you are seeing in the comments here has been fueled by years of us versus them class warfare fueled by liberals.
People have been losing jobs all around this country, in large measure because of liberal policy and the current administration's ignorant and hate-driven ideology. We don't know for sure who this guy voted for, but demographically it is likely he and many who worked with him in this unionized facility voted for democrats.
These are the same people who are not empathic, and often happy when someone who worked hard for years and years to succeed loses their six figure job. They are perfectly happy to socialize industries and nationalize medicine, irrespective of the effects on others, as long as they think they might be getting something for nothing and that the ‘overly’ successful are punished.
That's partly where the comments you see here are coming from. I feel sorry for the children most of all, but ultimately the futures of all of our children are being high-jacked and mortgaged to fuel the Utopian dreams and inflated egos of the left. What they didn't count on is that what goes around comes around.
Must be liberal think.
I imagine that was directed at union leadership, just as when we speak of the French in certain terms, we (I) don’t mean the good French people out in the countryside.
Exactly! I was thinking the same thing.
I was going to say, I'm surprised they don't have cardboard cut-outs of BMW monsters popping up from behind the couch.
. . . its not like they can Blame Hussein Obama.
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