“The biggest surprise is that no one threw the guy out on his ass.”
Well what can they do? It’s said and done. They can protest and raise awareness of the out-sourcing of their jobs, but i doubt it’ll get them their jobs back.
I work for a gas company and Carrier is one of the manufacturers we occasionally promote for rebates. Knowing this is going on is upsetting.
In before the apologists who say the company’s only choices were either move to Mexico or shut down altogether.
And btw, what’s wrong with businesses like this one being worker owned?
I never get this approach. If I’m getting made redundant, I don’t give a flying fuck what happens to the company afterwards. If anything, I’d rather it ceased to exist.
There are so many alternatives to shutting down and moving it makes me sick. And most that I can think of would also increase profit levels. It is fucking unconscionable.
Absolutely nothing! If the workers had been buying stock, they would have influence over these kinds of decisions. I think it’s a great idea for workers to buy the company!
As for the people in Mexico, I hope they don’t make long term plans for having these jobs. Soon, it will be all robots.
There’s something to be said for encouraging your workers to care about what they do vs everyone is replaceable and it’s just a job. More businesses need to realize that sharing profits or stock with your workers increases the value of the company. It’s not about cheap products and maximum profits.
repeatedly telling people to quiet down and saying “working with our lovely union reps” tells you all you need to know.
And the fact of the matter is, the guy that is announcing this is probably looking for a new job as well. I know several friends that work here, a few that work on the line, another that is management / supervisor, another that is an electrical / mechanical engineer. I have another friend that was the former head of technology and now down in Georgia at Rheem.
Pretty much no one that you see is probably at the level to make these decisions, nor are they the ones to get upset with. It is tone deaf but the manager probably knew that this was going to be put out into the public – especially when he is telling fired employees that this is good for the sake of the business – and being forced to do this or lose his job nearly immediately. Housing prices in Indy suck and it isn’t easy to sell, and most people I know that have lived here 10+ years have to take a loss…beyond that, even middle management is probably living from pay check to pay check because society encourages this. I feel bad for the guy that had to make the announcement…it should have been the board of directors that came down with the news.
That said, a 3 year phase out is better than most companies, and letting the employees know they have a year and a half before any of them are let go? I hope we can absorb them into our cities economy sooner than later.
There’s a reddit thread with a lot of detail. Apparently this factory has lost money for six years straight, so it really was a case of “move it or shut it down.” This speech was giving the employees a heads up that the factory would be closed in a year. That seems like a pretty decent thing to do (vs. the typical make-preparations-in-secret-and-unexpectedly-lock-the-doors routine which typically happens). Don’t be the uneducated reactionary we so often accuse the right of being.
How much stock could the employees own? I bet they’d struggle to get close to having enough to have any influence.
I’ve owned stock in companies I’ve worked for. It is a good thing for feeling more engaged and it encourages you to stick around but I never kidded myself that my tiny amount gave me any say in the company direction.
Working in the energy industry has been supremely depressing lately. Offices closing, ten of thousands laid off and not a word from the higher ups. Unless that word is a public announcement to make investors feel like the layoffs are how to protect profit.
I get calls from relatives asking if I still have a job, given they see layoff announcements of the financial news. And they know they happened before I do.
I’d rather having a nitwit poorly assuage me in the open rather than a lingering constant fear in the background.
No one strung up the fucker?
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
Then change the pricing for the services and goods they produce. Buy out under performing employees. Implement light weight six sigma for better quality control to justify higher prices. Use attrition to trim the workforce. Even in tough union shops all these things can happen, especially quality and pricing.
One of the local large oil companies, which has received substantial government incentives as well as effectively straight handouts, mentioned in their quarterly financials that they “overachieved” in layoffs and took 1900 people out.
It is nice that a for-profit enterprise can be plumped with public money to “create jobs,” up until the point where those jobs are slightly unprofitable, at which point the freshly unemployed again become the problem of the public who have been starved of tax revenue and savings by way of the aforementioned handouts to for-profit organizations in order to create jobs.
That’s exactly right. A company I worked for was acquired and everybody was laid off. The managers got everybody together and said, this sucks, we all worried this would happen, we hate that it’s happening, we’re losing our jobs too, and here are the details about severance and end dates. Not a word about the continued future success of the company and its customers, about which nobody cared. That’s because those guys, unlike the man in this video, were not complete fucking morons.
I don’t know that there’s a limit. There are companies that are 100% employee owned.
Indeed, I’ve worked for one before. Or at least a joint venture that was half owned by one. Said company isn’t employee owned any more.
If a company is set up that way, then awesome. But I thought we were talking about employees gradually buying up shares in their publically traded employer until they have a controlling share, which I think is unlikely/difficult.
Yes, I think that would be the precise way to handle it. I think to lead with “Thank God the Company will continue to go forward,” was thoughtless. Toward the end he added some information about knowing it impacted them. He seemed to want them to know it was hard for HIM. Well, no one cares how hard it is to fire a bunch of employees. They care how hard it is to feed their families with no job. I didn’t think he was so horrible though; sounded like he didn’t have a lot of information to share yet about specifics he knew they needed.
