WHIRLPOOL TO LAY OFF 730 AT ARKANSAS PLANT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051212/ap_on_bi_ge/whirlpool_jobs;_ylt=AnelYaiKweO03JCGVgd5YUhu24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl


FORT SMITH, Ark. - Appliance maker Whirlpool Corp. announced Monday it plans to lay off 730 workers at its refrigerator plant in Fort Smith, Ark.

Whirlpool said the workers would lose their jobs as the company will be opening a new plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico.


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Okay!

Everyone - say it with me ~

ADIOS WHIRLPOOL! Yo quero la Presidente el cahones! (I want a president with BALLS, not a fake Texan accent wrapped in an American flag!)

I'm thankful my brother, for now, still has his job in another town with them. I pray he gets to keep it. The "bottom line" these companies espouse to is complete boloney, because EVERY single American manufacturing job will disappear for cheap foreign labor if this keeps up another 10 years. The entire middle class of America will become the giant poor class. If we buy it, shouldn't we have the right to have it made here by our own citizens and instead start forcing these giant corporations to pay giant fines for destroying a whole town and thousands of families lives when they do this? There was nothing wrong with the Whirlpool fridges, and you can get a cheap one for under $500!

All this does is make the company, no one else, about FIFTY MILLION A YEAR IN "SAVINGS"... Whirlpool to workers: "Merry Christmas Ft. Smith, Arkansas!! You're fired for cheaper Mexican labor so we can make big bonuses for "cost cutting" measures we came up with!"

I'm sure they'll give you unemployed folks some tasty vittles at the soup kitchen that the glorious Baptist church, who used sermons to tell them to vote for Bush last year, will provide y'all! Wouldn't that be terrible if their churches stop getting most of their offerings and they can't pay to keep the pastors on salary anymore and instead force them to start paying the mortgage on their parsonages they built 'em?

Seriously though, you don't do this to your own country. Bet ya they won't be voting Republican in 06 and 08.

Oh wait, SILLY ME, the Republican party will take perverse cheap shots at the patriotism of the other candidate's military service saying he may have served but really is a "commie", say "he wants to take away yer rifle", "force videos on your children at school on how to become one of them queers!", and VOILA, a guy associated in some way with big business will get elected and a billionaire Oil Executive will sleep comfortably in his 1500 thread count sheets made by a 13 yr old girl in a Thailand sweat shop! AH, gotta love a good thing like capitalism & freedom gone insanely wrong! :puke:

Thanks George! Go spend 500 Billion on invading those naughty French next. I heard they have weapons of mass destruction (oh DEAR!) hidden away in a bunker under Big Ben!!! (Shhhhh, he might tell the military to bomb the clock and perhaps Tony Blair will finally stop kissing George's butt like most of their people demand!)

Oh so caustically,
One Fed Up American ~ 'The Martyred'

The economy is doing great and unemployment is down!. :sarcasm:

about thirty times this past week when they keep replaying Bush speeches to us all!


I love being programmed, er, receiving the GOOD NEWS!


bastards.

bless you and yours though cornermouse, we're barely getting by

In the past elections, did they vote for the Democrats or the Republicans?

Tesha

Last I checked, the inhabitants of Ft. Smith were the ones doing the voting. Some of them voted for Democrats, and some voted for Republicans. Either way, a couple of thousand jobs (at the least) are about to be lost.

And the Democrats haven't been very good on this issue, either. Too much money from Big Business is gumming up the congressional works.

am terrorfied of that also. DEMS are taking too much money from sleezy corporations, lobbyists and the like. certainly, in the millions. we need to keep pressing our candidates to refuse buyoff money.

Perhaps someone who actually *KNOWS THE ANSWER* will respond?

Tesha

Merely pointing out the fact that who the majority voted for is irrelevant. There are Republicans AND Democrats in every single locale in America (except maybe Utah, but that's a whole other discussion). Wishing harm on someone, or being happy that people have lost their jobs, because of who the majority voted for is ridiculous. The tendency of many people I've met is to say "Oh, most of them are in a red location? Screw 'em, they deserve what they get." If that's not what you were doing, then I sincerely apologize.

Here are the election results from Sebatian County:
27,251 16,426 215
Bush Kerry Nader

Once again, Fort Smith never voted for anybody. 27,000 of its residents voted for Bush, and 16,000 voted for Kerry.

It's the second county down from the top left in Arkansas:

> 27,000 of its residents voted for Bush, and 16,000 voted for Kerry.

So they voted for a program that includes:

o Preventing Adam and Steve from getting hitched.
o Preventing Suzie from getting an abortion or even emergency contraception
o Allowing them to keep personal arms
o Insinuating Christian Fundamentalism into many of the operations of the state
o Producing government-sponsored propaganda for both foreign and domestic consumption
o Completely abandoning planning for an energy shortage
o The gutting of the environment
o The gutting of the Endangered SPecies Act
o Killing more Iraqi children and women
o Destroying the American manufacturing sector

They're getting exactly what they wanted -- why whould any of them complain
now? Or did they stop reading after the second or third item in the program?

Tesha

If we lump the Democrats in with the Republicans in the "got what they asked for" majority-rules vote, then you or I are just as guilty:

George BUSH 60,608,582
John KERRY 57,288,974

They're getting exactly what they wanted -- why whould any of them complain
now? Or did they stop reading after the second or third item in the program?

By your own standards, maybe that should read:
We're getting exactly what we wanted -- why whould any of us complain
now? Or did we stop reading after the second or third item in the program?

Things aren't black & white.

You seem to be trying to make some connection between the Democrats who
work for Whirlpool and the fact that they are losing their jobs too, but
the only data point in evidence is that the county we're discussing voted
overwhelmingly Republican, suggesting there are far fewer Democrats
working for Whirlpool than Republicans, especially if the Whirlpool
workforce shows any bias towards White Males (as do so many manufacturing
jobs still).

But yes, we could indeed look at America as a whole and conclude that
the shit mess we're falling into is because 54,000,000 of us were too
dumb to recognize that one votes for the *COMPLETE PROGRAM* and not
just for individual line-items on it.

Perhaps next election, some of those folks will have learned a hard
lesson and won't be quite so stupid when the time comes to vote.
(But I wouldn't count in it.)

Tesha

I'll give you your last two paragraphs -- that's something we seem to be able to agree on.

Also, there's a lot more jobs at stake than the Whirlpool jobs, as I'm sure you know. What about the employees at thelocal daycare? What about the maids at the hotels that cater to employees of the Whirlpool company? What about the guy who manages the local video store? From voting records, about 2/3 of them are Bush voters, true, but what about the 1/3 who aren't?

Perhaps next election, some of those folks will have learned a hard
lesson and won't be quite so stupid when the time comes to vote.
(But I wouldn't count in it.)

By the next election, I suspect that most of these people will have accomplished the mental gymnastics necessary to blame it all on the Democrats, complain because they can't pay the cable bill and so have to watch Fox News at their mom's house, and register their new shotguns that they purchased to defend their homes from the unemployed. The scary thing is, there are more of them than there are of us, and they are in every city in every state.

but Whirlpool had been operating in Mexico for a looooong time. At least 15 years.

Layoffs are common there.

In fact these layoffs are "voluntary" (I know it sounds strange) but these folks get to keep their benefits, draw unemployment, and will be first to be hired when another line picks up.

Okay, now, it is also a fact that NAFTA was passed with the Repukes leading the way in congress and Clinton signing it!

So I wouldn't say that * voters did this to Whirlpool, but rather a long line of corporate money passing through both the (R) and (D) sides of the aisles did this.

And this is damaging, but not (hopefully) permanent.

Ft. Smith is more demographically mixed, supported Clinton, but supported *.

Farther North you run into Fundieville (just north of Fayetteville and inhabited by Wal-Mart, and it's corporate employees, and vendors employees

The county in the extreme NW corner is Benton, home of Wal-Mart. To the south of that is Washington Co., then Crawford Co., then Sebastian County, home of Ft. Smith.

Some of the good people who live in Fort Smith voted for democrats and some voted for republicans.

As has now been revealed, the *VAST MAJORITY* of them voted for
Republicans. So it's a bit late for them to be surprised at finding
out that the Republican Plan to Destroy America includes them, too.

Tesha

They even voted for Shrub in 2000. In 2004, Kerry only won by about 1.5%. In 1992, Clinton, even running against GHWB, only won by about 1.3%.

Let's not get too sanctimonious.

(I *HAVE* said that's why you shouldn't let NH control who gets
nominated as the Democratic candidate.)

Tesha

Ft. Smith is the reason why Bill Clinton lost his Congressional bid in '74, and it is a major reason why Arkansas' 3rd Congressional district has been Republican for the last 39 years. Ft. Smith's county, Sebastian, was one of only about 5 of Arkansas' 75 counties that voted against Bill Clinton in the '92 and ''96 elections.

I think the world is about to come to an end. The bulls crashed through the gates and nobody is intent on repairing them.

The writing is on the wall.

So it's my turn to get some cahones and actually try to live.

:puke:

730 jobs go to mexico and 730,000 mexicans come here illegally. no wonder people are getting fed up with this illegal shit....

Adam and Steve don't get to get hitched, and the fine folks
who supported that concept don't get to work at Whirlpool
anymore.

It's funny: actions have consequences.

Tesha

You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that I think that
NH has the correct politics. It doesn't. It's a cold-hearted,
skin-flinted state that's 'way too Republican and Libertarian,
makes a big deal about how "private charities" can carry the
social load and then comes up last in the nation on per-capita
charitable giving, and only votes for those taxes it can impose
on visitors or thinks the locals won't notice.

And all that, of course, has *NO BEARING WHATSOEVER* on
whether the inhabitants of Fort Smith are (also) as dumb as a
box of rocks for voting Republican against their (now obvious)
own economic interests.

Tesha

nicely done!

And they seem to have got what they voted for, eh????

I feel sorry for all of them, as they will, over time, except for the ones that voted Kerry back then, will see the error of their ways, I pray it doesn't come too late for their children starving.


That's no joke.


Merry Christmas Tesha and all of you.

Thank you for your kind words. But I seem to annoy a
lot of people here. :shrug:

Tesha

And, yes, I know there are Dems there who didn't ask for this and had it forced on them. I know. I live in a Red State.

But I just don't care...

Neither party would be willing to institute policies of protectionism that at this point are necessary if you don't want to see this happen.

Our party is no longer a worker centric party, its almost as pro corporate as the Republican party now. Its also one of the reasons those who economically should vote for us have left because to them the parties are the same economically they then shift to social issues. Check out 'Whats the Matter with Kansas?' for a nice analysis of this.

on Corps. that outsource jobs and giving tax breaks to Corps that don't? Or maybe I just imagined that he did. :shrug:

:grr: :grr:

and it is shipped over to China?

with China basically becoming a "world" unto itself and it's need for jobs, food, oil, etc, your point will be proven!

God bless us all in these ridiculous times....

the martyred

I see so many posts and they get lost in the daily shuffle.

My heart goes out to those employees and their families. Hubby and I have been through two plant closings and we will probably never recover..our current income is down to what it was some 20 yrs ago.

bless you in your own crisis you're dealing with with the 2 plant closings, and income loss... you know the rethugs like you're having to live tighter, it gives them greater control.

great idea about the job loss post. I think they should have a section that's organized showing job losses to overseas, and a list of bush's worst decisions and comments. I'd use it a lot!