These folks are getting the outsourced jobs — Do you think they trust Bain?
As Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney faces a withering attack over outsourcing and layoffs by his former firm, Bain Capital, employees at a Bain-owned company are appealing to Romney to stop their jobs being shipped overseas…
The plant’s employees are calling on Romney to use his influence with former Bain colleagues to keep the plant open.
The workers signed a petition asking him to help, and the Freeport City Council passed a motion on Monday urging the candidate to step in to save the jobs.
“If he wanted to, all he needs to do is call up the management of Bain Capital and say, ‘Look, don’t do this,’” said Tom Gaulrapp, who has worked at the factory for 33 years…
As a major investor in Sensata, Romney could gain from an outsourcing move that is likely to cut costs and increase the company’s presence in emerging markets.
Sensata bought the Freeport plant as part of an acquisition of Honeywell International’s auto-sensor business in late 2010. The 170 jobs there were at risk from the start of the purchase…In their first meeting with their new employers when the deal was completed in January 2011, workers at the plant were told their jobs would be eliminated by the end of 2012.
Chinese workers have since been brought in to learn how to operate the equipment. The first batch of layoff notices went out last week…
No doubt Romney will consider all the political factors involved in this decision – and do nothing. He’s a do-nothing kind of guy.
“No doubt Romney will consider all the political factors involved in this decision – and do nothing. He’s a do-nothing kind of guy.” /// Sad that a perceptive experienced skeptical guy such as yourself would think this.
NO!
Romney is part of the .01% and will do nothing to stop the outsourcing BECAUSE HE PERSONALLY BENEFITS FROM THIS CORPORATE RAPE!! Thats how he made his first 350 Million and how he plans to make his second 350 Million.
Interesting how taking 170 Jobs overseas is now considered “doing nothing” when it is very dramatically just the opposite.
How drugged and insensate we are encouraged to be.
RICH = CRIMINAL. Yea Verily.
Vote your own pocketbook===AS IT IS, not as you fantacize it to be.
The plant’s employees are calling on Romney to use his influence with former Bain colleagues to keep the plant open.'”
Good luck, the money junkies will always err on the side of money for them,,,,,,
survivingsurvivalism.com
Sheila – the point is that it is no error. Try to keep up.
Sheila is a troll who only posts inane nonsense to promote his “learn watch repair in your spare time” business.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Ugly–I need to be nudge a little bit more. TRUE–Shiela remains unengaged in the substance of these threads but “most” of her initial comments are tailored to the subject at hand: at least equal to half the other commentators posting here. Enough paying attention that I wonder why her contribution is so limited.
Actually, I do need to spend more time on her website. The subject is of interest in a sci-fi “not really” sort of way.
How else can we learn if we don’t engage those who disagree with us?
I agree with what you said. I just have this (possibly irrational) dislike of people who game forums for their own benefit. “Sheila” will NEVER respond to this or any other criticism, because once he posts, he never revisits the topic. In fact it is probably just some semi-sophisticated spambot.
Well Ugly–Sheila’s challenge in this game is that it is played openly. We all see her for what she is and how weakly she plays.
Her first, and only, comment is on subject and would move the issue along if she ever engaged. So….not your typical troll, not even your typical spammer. Just some meaningless decoration we have to put up with as we encourage all to give their full measure to issues under consideration.
Just as I reconsider that it was disjointed of me to equate Romney’s Outsourcing of Jobs as “doing something” to Eideards doing nothing regarding the petition of those company employees. Not a fair linkage I made there. Honestly made by me on first impression, but wrong on further consideration.
but I do like spam–as a convenient pressed waste food product. I could even survive on it if I had no alternatives.
Romney might take a hand here just to get the focus off of his hidden tax returns.
Romney–the most “entitled” American in current affairs. Thinks because he is RICH ( = CRIMINAL) that he can just BOARD ROOM BULLY his way as he wishes it to be.
Thank god Obama is hanging tough on the issue. Seems he “cares” about being re-elected in a way he hasn’t cared about all the other issues he has dealt with. “Probably” he has given his re-election over to experts.
Ha, ha. All our leaders with feet of clay. When the philosophical leaders of your own party are uniformily against you (ie==release your tax info)==eventually reality will bend Romney to its will.
I’ve actually thought some about: should there be a law that office seekers release their tax info. I finally decided: No. Let the idiots reveal themselves by their failure to do so.
And violet: there he is.
Ha, ha. Stoopid Millionaire.
The tax return kerfluffle is good old fashioned misdirection. “Look, nothing up my sleeve!!!”
He’ll use it to generate faux controversy, then eventually “cave in” and release them.
Meanwhile, something that would really be of interest is going unnoticed while you’re looking the wrong way.
Ding ding ding ding, we have a winner. Just how Bush let them search for his cocaine use. Perhaps they would have found some real AWOL stuff instead of fake memos.
I disagree. Romney is such a two dimensional character there is nothing to him beyond his vulture capitalism and self interest in taking the reigns of America out of political hands and into his own nest feathering onanism.
There is nothing to Romney beside his Vulture Capitalism and Religious Self Appointednism. He is the chosen one as determined by himself, his church, his family, and eveyone else around him.
Is there “nothing” in his tax returns? It has already damaged his low standing even in his own party!!!!!!! Ha, ha. The Master of the Universe is getting dirty in squalid politics. So much better if we would just anoint Mitt in some private ceremony.
We are only a few steps away. Maybe in 2032.
Bain’s employees are mostly donating to Obama, so I doubt Romney would have much influence.
Perhaps we should outsource the job of President to the Communist Party in China.
China seems to be where a lot of jobs are going.
China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was supposed to improve the U.S. trade deficit with China and create good jobs in the United States.
But those promises have gone unfulfilled: the total U.S. trade deficit with China reached $235 billion in 2006. Between 2001 and 2006, this growing deficit eliminated 1.8 million U.S. jobs (Scott 2007).
The world’s biggest retailer, U.S.-based Wal-Mart was responsible for $27 billion in U.S. imports from China in 2006 and 11% of the growth of the total U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2006. Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs in this period.
Orchi–thats about the best line you have posted. Deep. Super Deep. ….. Course–our forms of corruption won’t mesh that easily. Does that make a call for the gold standard?
Ha, ha.
Pop Quiz:
What person said these quotes, and was this person a liberal or a conservative; a Democrat or a Republican?
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Only Americans can hurt America.
We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
Sounds like Harry Truman but I’ll google it.
Eisenhower. Duh me.
Let me get this right, this ninny wants Romney to use his imaged influence with _former_ business associates on a major money issue? The article doesn’t even suggest that Romney is a member of the board of directors or has any more authority in the company than I do which is none!
I have a simple suggestion. If you don’t want jobs off shored stop voting for people who are making the costs of running a business in the US go up astronomically. Of course it may be a little late to matter because Obama and friends have already sold your butt to China or at least rented it out. Never fear I’m confident that 4 more years of Obama and company can change rented to owned by. I’m not sure when the debt spiral kicks in but once it does nothing we can do including turning over our national parks to the Chinese is going get us out in less than at least a decade of utter agony. Of course a lot of very low paying jobs will come home because nobody is going to accept payment in dollars and our balance of trade bleeps.
Obama sold our butt to China? Really?
My bad. I was under the impression that CEO’s of the major multinational corporations were all into the globalization thing and obtaining slave labor in a communist country was good for profits and shareholder values.
I was under the impression that big business is only interested in what is good for them and not what is good for the country as whole.
I was under the impression that the Republican party was supportive of the working class and the middle class and not the aristocracy.
Business people are exactly like you. They are in it for themselves and their stockholders just like you go to work, if you work, because you get paid.
When they find out they can’t make money they close shop. When they find out they can make more money or at least still make money and stay in business by outsourcing they will outsource just like Apple Computers. A great American success story but only by making _nothing_ in the US.
Of course you can try Fed. Gov. run businesses like the military, the mail, or GM in which they are both outsourcing and selling heavily subsidized products like the volt that nobody wants. GM with the two tier pay scale and GM with massive outsourcing success stories that won’t bring money home to help bail out its American branch because they considered it to be a _wasted_ investment.
Obama is putting more people on disability than he is creating jobs and a mother with no job can have a higher effective income than I had as a teacher. That is the America that we are creating but debt is running wild so eat drink and be merry because our line of credit is going to run out and then dude you are going have nothing!
As you say: they are in it for themselves and their stockholders.
But they are required by law to be.
That’s the irony of the whole situation. The system and the situation are supposed to be this way!*
They are in fact doing the right thing, because if they weren’t they could get tossed out of the boardroom and into the unemployment line, just like the rest of us.
*) Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences. (Not unforeseeable to anyone with even a basic understanding of economics though. [Which lets out most politicians. {They don’t have a basic understanding of anything beyond the next dollar they can beg, borrow or steal as a campaign contribution (Which put their sense of morality in clear focus, doesn’t it? 🙂 )}])
When they set up the free trade pacts, zones and organizations to operate across borders they were setting themselves for exactly this kind of macro-economic effects on the micro-economies on both sides of the border.
Like water flowing downhill, capital flows to where it can get the most bang for its buck.
Of course, eventually you end up with vertical stratifications and deserts in arid lands above underground aquifers, just like we’re seeing the rise of Chinese maquiladoras and the Vietnamese and other East Asian countries are starting eat into the Chinese profitability.
The major move to outsourcing started with Regean, who got the tax code changed such that it became more profitable to outsource jobs than to keep making things here.
But, it had already begun even before Regean, and has its seeds in the Arab Oil Embargo/Energy Crisis/Bill for the Vietnam War Coming Due/Horrid Monetary and Fiscal Policies that lead up to the stagflation and recession of the 1970s. It’s been pretty much downhill for the USA since then.
If you don’t want jobs off shored stop voting for people who are making the costs of running a business in the US go up astronomically.
Costs of running a business? You mean like minimum wage? Our workers will NEVER be competitive with workers in other countries who earn pennies a day. NEVER. EVER. Either we reconcile ourselves to the fact that bringing manufacturing back to this country will result in higher prices for durable goods, and accept that as necessary for job creation, or we give up and become a two-class culture, with the majority of us who are not rich taking our flat screen TV’s and xboxes as consolation prizes for not having real jobs with any sort of meaningful future.
It may be worse than that. The way we are heading it is very likely we will end up with a ruling class that lives well and everybody else lives very poorly. You will of course get free senior care but the right name for it will be euthanasia. You will get free food but it may end up being not much better than dry dog food, etc.
Senior Care, hell health care itself, in the ‘States will eventually amount to the selection of the caliber of bullet…
It will make retirement parties look like Hussein’s political purge.
When you’re competing to be the biggest, most callous, inhuman beast around, you eventually, uh, win.
Bingo!
Of course it may result in higher prices. I’m ok with that. It’s all about priorities.
You want a job for yourself and for your children or do you want a flat screen for $100 less ?
I say have a tariff war with China. Bring it on
Interesting.
Do-ill, you vomit forth: “Of course it may be a little late to matter because Obama and friends have already sold your butt to China or at least rented it out.” //// You really going to pin the rise of China on Obama?
Really?
I picture with Mick smiling ans smirking would befit this article greatly 🙂 I can already imagine it!
This was a predictable move by the Obama campaign. ted Kennedy was able to set up a strike 20 yeas ago.
Romney should have American petition Bill Clinton to get him to talk to Obama about taking away millions of jobs.
Presidents do not create jobs.
Corporations create jobs.
Investors create jobs.
If jobs are outsourced to other countries, that is creating jobs in other countries, not in America.
Presidents do not create jobs.
Quite right. Presidents create climates where they represent the prevailing attitude towards change and present strategies for coping with change.
Corporations create jobs.
Not if they can possibly avoid it. Jobs cost capital and human resources. The most profitable corporations are those that can produce and market their goods for the lowest cost while maintaining the greatest cost controls.
Investors create jobs.
Never. They are merely looking for opportunities for better returns on their investments.
Trade barriers, wether in the form of enforcement or in terms of natural differences, are the difference between the globalized drug cartels, providers of a low cost, high-demand, high mark up product, legal and otherwise, and a mom-‘n-pop retail outlets.
(Mexico’s Zetas drug lords are the ultimate capitalists.)
Homogeneities and economies of scale always apply.
Oh you mean bring back jobs like Obomba supporter and job czar Jeffrey Immelt did with GE? Most of their workforce is overseas and that is where their profits are kept to avoid US taxes.
Or maybe you mean bring back jobs like Jonathon Lavine did when he was in charge of Bain Capital and laid off the workers of GST Steel in 2001. Lavine is a top Obomba bungler, er I mean bundler.
No. More like GM. The opportunity was there for GM and not there for GE.
It’s good that you ask questions so kudos to you.
I missed arguing with you Dallas.
Perhaps they should send their petition to Obama. On top of getting more money from Bain, one of his top bampaign finance guys, reported as bundling between 100K and 200K to date, is a managing partner at Bain.
Top row, fifth head on the right. How the hell did he get in the picture?
That’s Rick Steves. He was doing a travelogue.
Probably an illegal.
There is very little “news” here but plenty of innuendo and bum information such as “If he wanted to, all he needs to do is call up the management of Bain Capital and say, Look, don’t do this”. Does anybody believe that? Was the article sponsored by American Bridge 21st Century?
How do we function and remain completive without some outsourcing, shall we try isolationism? Hell, I’ve seen outsourcing of IT departments to other companies in the US.
Unfortunately the average Dimocrat is stupid enough to lap this up and put the sleaze-in-chief in office for four more.
The political system’s structure itself has been gamed into paralysis.
I know what needs to be done: start over and re-implement democracy away from any system, but I seriously doubt anyone has the brains or the balls to try it.
You cannot have it both ways. Compete globally for business for your products and build everything here in the US. Costs are a big factor in business these days. People in the US enjoy cheaper products built outside of the US. But when it comes to there job they don’t believe they should lose their job to someone in China or elsewhere. Does not work that way. Bain capital and others are saviors to troubled companies that would most likely close up anyway leaving American’s out of work. Is it not better to save some jobs then lose all jobs? That’s really what it comes down too.
By your logic, the European and/or US governments being supra-state structures, should not be implemented in Brussels or Washington, unless those locations offer the lowest cost of establishing said governments.
The capitals should therefore be emptied out and the governing bodies should become virtual ones without any buildings or other structures.
All governance would become local.
I like it.
No more sending people off (and paying for it all) to some remote administrative seat.
Thats a very interesting article about bain capital!
Evidently, Willard Romney has Bermuda, Switzerland and a host of other places used to evade taxes. The Nazis also used these foreign countries to hide money.
You do the math.
Holy shit! I get exactly what you mean. Romney is a NAZI!
You said it, not me! I’m just providing facts.
I don’t live too far from Freeport and these people are idiots. If they are trying to save their jobs why not offer to take pay cuts or contribute more to benefits. That’s really what it ends up happening. They are worth less because someone somewhere else will do there job for less money and benefits. If a company like Bain becomes involved in the business you work for. Its not because they are doing so great they will offer you as a employee a raise and better benefits. Its because they are going belly up and need to save money. American’s don’t fool yourselves into thinking your skills are worth more then some Korean’s or Chinese. Or somewhere else. People have your skills all over the world. Stop being stupid.
They are worth less because someone somewhere else will do there job for less money and benefits.
You equivocated worth and cost falsely there.
The question of worth is a fuzzy one, as one never knows the actual value of anything since that is based on market economics, while the question of cost is a matter of accounting.
That said, at some point, there must be some reconciliation based on something more than mere market forces, otherwise what’s the point?
Your personal worth becomes the value of the constituent component of your body; about one or two dollars
It’s funny how most people are pissed off about shipping jobs overseas which (supposedly) denies Americans those very same jobs — and the ability to earn a living.
We don’t seem to be pissed off for the right reasons!
No one is even considering the fact that these jobs went to a COMMUNIST country! THEY DON’T NEED JOBS since the (Chinese) state provides everything.
We also don’t need to be spending money in other parts of the world like Brazil only to have to buy back whatever those countries dvelop at double the price to anyone else. It’s like loaning someone money to get started in a business but then not only get screwed from any price break but actually be charged more than anyone else. “Unfair” doesn’t even begin to describe that kind of crap. (Thank you Mr. Obama!)
How stupid do you have to be? Oh! Wait a minute. I almost forgot about CONGRESS! There’s your answer – a democrat Congress that made up all these new “rules”! So keep voting for the bastards and you’ll have your “dream”!
I haven’t seen the new hybrid mix of Chinese authoritarianism in control being funded by free-market/manipulated market production. With millions going hungry and an American Style privileged class being given exalted status over the working class–it sure looks closer to a Capitalist System than the Communist system it was only 20 years ago.
Always amusing when an opponent you don’t respect takes you to the mat time and time again. Something in the technique has to be recognized as wrong.
A good demonstration of pragmatism: your philosophy is BS if my philosophy is winning.
Same as it always was.
If you think Romney or Obama are the answer you’re clueless.
This blog, along with the rest of the country, is
substantially in that category (with a few exceptions).
Romney didn’t fire those people. Somebody else did that.
Romney would first have to give 1/100 of a shit about them. Not going to happen.
This is not Romney’s problem regardless of how much the BS manufacturing machine tries to make it his problem.
Bain Capital today is run by mostly Obama campaign donors. Why doesn’t Obama get his campaign donors to keep this plant in Illinois?
Illinois is also once of the most anti-business friendly states in the nation. I’m surprised there are ANY manufacturing facilities left in that state.
Why is Illinios such an anti-business friendly state? The blame is squarely at the feet of Democrats and people like Obama and his supporters.
As long as corporations have to satisfy greedy investors who want to make money even in bad economic times, we will have low quality products at high prices made by foreigners.
The chinese can’t even make good flyswatters. I used a cheap chinese flyswatter and the head flew off. Design problem? The wires were not at an angle when they go into the plastic swatter.
American made flyswatters have been the same design for decades and have been trusty and cheap. But some corporation decided they could save 5 cents per unit and move the manufacturing to China.
Now we are flooded by flyswatters that break the moment you use them, but hey they’re $1.00 cheaper.