Showing posts with label General Electric. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Electric. Show all posts

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Since the 1990s 144,000 manufacturing and related jobs lost in Wisconsin due to free-trade agreements

Reported here:

Wisconsin has lost more than more than 68,000 manufacturing jobs since the mid-1990s and the first of several controversial trade pacts with Mexico, China and others took hold.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor has certified about 76,000 Wisconsin workers in various fields as having lost their jobs due to either imports or the work they do being shipped overseas. ... 

Caterpillar has laid off about 600 of its 800-plus workers over the past two years because of a business slowdown. ...

Wisconsin’s heavy manufacturing sector, once one of the country’s strongest, has been taking a lot of punches in recent years. General Motors, General Electric, Chrysler, Joy Global Surface Mining and Manitowoc Cranes have all cut jobs or closed operations in recent years for a variety of reasons.

Hometown companies such as Kohler, the plumbing supply manufacturer; and Trek Bicycles have offshored jobs to India, China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Madison, the state capital, will lose 1,000 jobs over the next two years as the 100-year-old iconic Oscar Mayer meat processing plant shuts down. And just east on I-94 in Jefferson, Tyson Foods will cease operations at its pepperoni processing plant, cutting 400 jobs.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Rush Limbaugh Thinks The Pope Is Totally Wrong, Biting The Hand That Makes The Church Rich


[T]his pope makes it very clear he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism and so forth. ...

If it weren't for capitalism, I don't know where the Catholic Church would be. ... I have been numerous times to the Vatican.  It wouldn't exist without tons of money. ...

This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.  Unfettered capitalism?  That doesn't exist anywhere.  Unfettered capitalism is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States. ... 

[R]eading what the pope's written about this is really befuddling because he's totally wrong -- I mean, dramatically, embarrassingly, puzzlingly wrong. ...

The Catholic Church, the American Catholic Church has an annual budget of $170 billion.  I think that's more than General Electric earns every year.  And the Catholic Church of America is the largest landholder in Manhattan.  I mean, they have a lot of money.  They raise a lot of money.  They wouldn't be able to reach out the way they do without a lot of money.


Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Fascist Obama's Fascist General Electric Shill Lectures Business on Jobs

GE's Jeff Immelt lectures business on taking the lead on jobs here while cutting his own workforce 11 percent between 2009 and 2011 (here), from 323,000 to 287,000.


Wednesday, March 30, 2011

News Story Misidentifies Reactors in New Photos

The UK Daily Mail has been providing up to the minute coverage with excellent and timely photographs, which, sad to say, seems to have failed us this day.

It's not a quibble either, because the import of the article is that Reactor 2 has melted through its vessel, in the opinion, OPINION!, of the GE head of safety research when the reactor was installed. And he's been all over the British press, not just the Daily Mail, repeating that OPINION:

Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian that he believed nuclear fuel had melted and burned through the reactor floor in unit number two.

But try to accurately identify that reactor in these photos:

This photo's caption appears to be correct, but Reactor 2 appears to be the most intact.




This photo's caption appears to be incorrect. These are reactors four and three, not one and two.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Jeff Immelt: Obama's Crony Nuclear Capitalist

Rachel Layne for Bloomberg has a lengthy article about GE's nuclear business, which its chairman Jeff Immelt, was hoping to expand dramatically in India:

General Electric Co. (GE)’s goal of broadening its $1 billion nuclear service-and-parts business with sales of new reactors risks stalling as world leaders reconsider the future of atomic energy.

Governments from Germany, which halted 25 percent of its nuclear-generated electricity, to India, with $175 billion in planned spending by 2030, are reassessing the technology after Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled a power plant and raised the threat of a meltdown.

Immelt is the new head of Obama's team of economic advisers, on which he also sat before he replaced Paul Volcker.

He was among numerous American corporate figures who accompanied Obama on his lavish trip to India after the November elections in 2010.

Watch for GE to make a huge contribution after Obama is out of office to his presidential library.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Here's Why Your Government Stalled on the FOIA for Two Years

Because the American taxpayer has bailed out the whole world, that's why. We're now the biggest suckers in history.

And the following information wouldn't have been released either, except for the Dodd-Frank legislation:

Citigroup ($2.2 trillion)

Merrill Lynch ($2.1 trillion)

Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion)

Bear Stearns ($960 billion)

Bank of America ($887 billion)

Goldman Sachs ($615 billion)

JPMorgan Chase ($178 billion)

Wells Fargo ($154 billion)

Swiss bank UBS ($165 billion)

Deutsche Bank ($97 billion)

Royal Bank of Scotland ($92 billion)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack ($1.25 trillion)

General Electric ($16 billion)

Harley-Davidson Inc. ($2.3 billion)

Caterpillar Inc. dealers ($733 million)

The story from yahoo.com is totally irresponsible for saying the Fed didn't take part in an appeal to the Supreme Court with a group of commercial banks seeking to prevent the disclosure of the names of institutions receiving emergency loans in 2008. Hell, the Fed appealed all the way up the line until it came time to appeal to the Supreme Court or comply with two (2! II! Zwei!) orders from lower courts to disclose the information. And we still don't have that.

Has anyone painted a clearer picture of the bankruptcy of our largest institutions and industries?

Only a fool would keep his money in a bank now.

Hell, only a fool would keep money.

Friday, October 16, 2009

90 Jobs--10,000 Applicants/99.1% Disappointed

The country needs to create roughly 150,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with first time job seekers, but the inventory of already unemployed Americans just continues to grow. Who's going to have the money to buy the washing machines these lucky 90 are going to make? Certainly not the 15+ million Americans who've lost their jobs.

The news from Kentucky:

October 8, 2009

10,000 apply for 90 factory jobs

By Jere Downs
jdowns@courier-journal.com

In the latest sign of weakness in Louisville-area employment, about 10,000 people applied over three days for 90 jobs building washing machines at General Electric for about $27,000 per year and hefty benefits.

The jobs dangle medical, eye care, prescription and dental benefit packages, as well as pension, disability, tuition assistance and more, said GE spokeswoman Kim Freeman. And despite the recession, no union workers have been laid off from Appliance Park since the company negotiated lower wages with workers in 2005.

“There are no jobs out there paying these kinds of wages that also offer these kind of benefits,” said Jerry Carney, president of IUE-CWA Local 761 at Appliance Park.

Just four years ago, the same jobs paid $19 per hour. But that was before Local 761 approved wage cuts for new workers aimed at preventing the closure of Appliance Park.

“People still value these jobs,” Freeman said.

With the Jefferson County unemployment rate at 10.6 percent in August and more than 38,000 unemployed people looking for work, the opportunity for moderate pay and health care was an attractive lure.

“In this recession, there are lot of people who are just about to run out of unemployment benefits,” said Richard Hurd, a labor relations professor at Cornell University. The national average of time unemployment benefits collected now stands at 26 weeks, Indiana University Southeast Professor of Business Uric Dufrene said.

That’s about a third of the maximum that can currently be collected.

Larissa Roos, 38, never worked in a factory, but was one of the thousands who bid on jobs assembling appliances.

Until she was laid off from Bank of America in February, Roos said she made $18 per hour fielding calls, often from irritated merchants, about credit card glitches. Roos took that job just out of high school. But severance payments end this month, and Roos said she is looking everywhere to try to replace the income.

“I need something so I can live day to day. The job market is horrible,” Roos said Thursday, adding the family relies on her husband’s job as a printer to pay the mortgage on their Fern Creek home as well as utility, fuel and other bills.

With 10,000 vying for GE line jobs, “I am sure my application won’t even get looked at,” she added.

The rush of applicants came as no surprise to Carney, who noted that another recent GE advertisement for 13 maintenance workers, who are paid a union skilled trades rate of $23 hourly, drew 700 job seekers.

Carney credited GE’s reputation for union job security and blue chip benefits as a powerful lure.

GE announced the new jobs last week and started accepting applications through a website Monday. Wednesday was the deadline. The jobs are being added to a new second shift early next month to assemble Energy Star washing machines in Building 1 at the historic Louisville complex.

Roughly 80 percent of applicants report factory experience, Freeman said. That is not surprising, given the recession so far has slashed 8,000 manufacturing jobs from the region’s economy, Dufrene said.

“There is an abundance of potential employees with manufacturing-related skills,” Dufrene said.

The rough profile of applicants, most of them former factory workers, suggests many lack sufficient education to apply for more than minimum wage jobs in the current job market.

Half lacked a high school diploma. Just 5 percent of the applicants said they had a bachelor’s degree or higher. and

GE employs roughly 2,100 hourly and 2,000 white collar workers at Appliance Park. Now, about 440 workers labor on the first shift making washing machines in Building 1.

Applicant Shane Hopkins, 48, hopes his factory experience provides an edge.

Until mid-August, he said he maintained presses at a plastics factory. Now, Hopkins said he picks up occasional work as a flooring contractor for a cousin.

He still pays $300 per month to keep health care benefits for himself and his wife, an independent contractor for a Ford Motor Co. parts supplier at the Louisville Assembly Plant. Hopkins anticipates she’ll be out of work next year, when the plant closes for retooling.

A year from now, “her job ain’t going to be there,” Hopkins said. “I am thinking seriously about going to McDonalds, just for the benefits if nothing else.”

Reporter Jere Downs can be reached at (502) 582-4669.