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I had worked with a division of Borg Warner in the mid seventies for about 10 years, and got a call earlier this week that many of the employees who were retired were getting together for breakfast and to talk about old times so I traveled to the get together.
I got there and about 25 old folk were at the table of which I knew more than half. It was a great morning with some people I had not seen in 20 plus years, and although they had all aged, we immediately reverted back to when we had worked together so many years ago. The sad thing is last summer they had demolished this modern plant which was only built in 1968. Twenty five percent of production went to Ky fifty percent to Mexico, and the last 25% went to China. The plant had employed one thousand, and always produced amazing profits, but I left when Emerson Electric out of St. Louis bought the plant and began moving parts of production to KY and Mexico.
Most of these people put 30 plus years with the same company and they were getting traditional pensions. They produced wealth through the manufacturing process. Some of their fathers had worked with the company and their collective ingenuity had created a remarkable product, yet those who controlled capital simple discounted the labor and the community which had built the company, and now most of the production is in Mexico and surprisingly the quality of product coming back to KY is very good, but the plant has been demolished and a rich industrial tradition and skillset has forever been lost in America.
Sometime unfettered capitalism is not good, and sometimes it is very good, but a generation of industrial displacement faces America, and how it was done will be a shameful part of this country's history, where so few made profit and so many were hurt.
I got there and about 25 old folk were at the table of which I knew more than half. It was a great morning with some people I had not seen in 20 plus years, and although they had all aged, we immediately reverted back to when we had worked together so many years ago. The sad thing is last summer they had demolished this modern plant which was only built in 1968. Twenty five percent of production went to Ky fifty percent to Mexico, and the last 25% went to China. The plant had employed one thousand, and always produced amazing profits, but I left when Emerson Electric out of St. Louis bought the plant and began moving parts of production to KY and Mexico.
Most of these people put 30 plus years with the same company and they were getting traditional pensions. They produced wealth through the manufacturing process. Some of their fathers had worked with the company and their collective ingenuity had created a remarkable product, yet those who controlled capital simple discounted the labor and the community which had built the company, and now most of the production is in Mexico and surprisingly the quality of product coming back to KY is very good, but the plant has been demolished and a rich industrial tradition and skillset has forever been lost in America.
Sometime unfettered capitalism is not good, and sometimes it is very good, but a generation of industrial displacement faces America, and how it was done will be a shameful part of this country's history, where so few made profit and so many were hurt.