(Rockford, IL) Sundstrand likely to lay off 275

http://www.rrstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041106/BUSINESS05/411060308

ROCKFORD —- Hamilton Sundstrand, the region’s largest manufacturing employer, plans to lay off 10 percent of its work force starting next year as part of a national restructuring plan that the company says will allow it to enhance its “competitive position.”

The Rockford layoffs are contingent on the company satisfying the terms of its collective bargaining agreement. Company officials and members of United Auto Workers Local 592, which represents 180 of the 275 Rockford workers slated to be laid off, are scheduled to meet starting Monday. They will discuss why Sundstrand made the decision, whether the jobs must go and whether any affected workers would be allowed to follow the work to the other plants.

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To that, company spokeswoman Melissa Marsden said, “There is nothing that a city, county or state official could do or could have done to preclude this action.”

The layoffs in Rockford will take place in 2005, although the company declined to offer specific dates. They will come from two Sundstrand operations: repair and overhaul at the Harrison Avenue plant and electronics manufacturing at 11th Street.

The work will go from Rockford to nonunion Sundstrand plants in Florida, Arizona and Puerto Rico.

...more...

There is nothing that a city, county or state official could do or could have done to preclude this action ... The work will go from Rockford to nonunion Sundstrand plants in Florida, Arizona and Puerto Rico.


Nothing, really? You shameless little fuck. Also good job by the UAW. Way to show solidarity within and between locals. Disgusting through and through.

this has been a slow process over the years to get rid of union labor in rockford.

Are the words "strike" and "solidarity" still part of the American labor movement vocabulary? I see unions get screwed left and right, from the airlines to manufacturing, with nary a response.

Strong support for organized labor needs to be part of the new Democratic platform. Without it, we're just the socially progressive wing of the republican party.

And the jobs are going to "non-union" in FL, AZ and Puerto Rico. Who did Puerto Rico go for?

I've been following Hamilton Sundstrand before Hamilton Standard took over.

You can thank Jack Welch, former CEO of GE for the turn in events.

General Electric is a notoriously anti-union company.

But why does GE play into the picture with Sundstrand? The training that GE provides to its managers, which is vividly anti-union, and its graduates have left GE to other companies, among them 3M, Boeing, Home Depot, to name a few. So the anti-union rhetoric has been spread far and wide. Sundstrand was headed by one of these Welch proteges, Harry Stonecipher...who is now the Boeing CEO.

I'd tell you more, but leave it up to you, the reader to do your research.