As Unions Lose Their Grip, Indiana Lures Manufacturing Jobs
 

Finally, union workers are seeing the light.
Too bad the power company had to turn off their electricity first.

In Rust Belt, Caterpillar Finds Labor Can Be Cheap - WSJ.com

From the article:

London, Ontario, whose population is 366,000, also has suffered from losses of automotive-related jobs and is eager to keep as much manufacturing employment as possible. Worry began to mount last spring when Caterpillar proposed to cut wages at the London plant by about 50%. The union refused that offer, and at the end of 2011 Caterpillar said it would lock out the workers until they agreed to a new contract. The workers set up a camp outside the factory gates, burning scrap wood in old oil drums, and picketed around the clock.

During the lockout, London Mayor Joe Fontana says, he called senior Caterpillar executives frequently to ask what the government could do to help keep the jobs in London. "I'd ask, 'Do you want new equipment, new research grants?'" he says. Caterpillar's answer, the mayor says, was that the first step was to sort out the wage dispute.

Early on Feb. 3, Mr. Fontana took a call from a Caterpillar manager and learned that the plant was closing. "I said, 'I can't believe you have closed the plant when we were still talking about ways to get you back,'" the mayor says. A Caterpillar spokesman declined to comment.

I guess this proves that Canadian union workers are just as ignorant of basic supply and demand laws as their American counterparts.

Cat is opening a new plant in Athens, GA.

Yay, minimum wage jobs!

Yay, not...

Son of a neighbor friend here works for RING power, they used to have a HUGE place off US1/Phillips highway here in Jax....but they moved south near St. Augustine into a huge new setup, they are a major regional dealership for CAT, and are going great guns, like that plant in Pennsylvania that was shipping road building gear to China some years ago, I bet China is wearing out lots of CAT gear also....much less any other country that wants a interstate highway system or decent housing....

:seasix:

so that means CAT has to keep costs in line or die, that damn simple....

:cert:

How dare Cat not want to pay someone $50+/hr + another $50k a year in benefits to do work that could be done by a trained monkey.

And just because someone isn't a union worker doesn't mean they're working for minimum wage...

Well above minimum wage+ benefits.

Not many companies survive paying above-market wages for labor (or anything else).

Ol' Jerry D. Bumpus, Sr was shore glad to git that job!

Bullsh*t!!

All workers who are not unionized are getting screwed over by evil businesses and making minimum wage working in sweat shops chained to the floor and being whipped by those mean upper management folks who are wearing suits made of money.

Down with evil businesses!!!

Down with capitalism!!!

Signed Barack H. Obama