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And Publix - I assume there are ones near you? Sāwhere we shopped in GA.
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Is Publix employee-owned? Somehow, I didnāt know that! I do go there, but I also go to a nearby Kroger thatās a union shop and a local farmers marketā¦
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Also employee-owned; sixteen of them and growing:
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What part of the US are they in?
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You should write them a letter and ask.
oh hey WinCo up in Edmonds is now open and not bad. the fresh veggies are not the best thing every but the rest of the selection is good.
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Next time Iām in Wisco Iāll stop in.
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Yes. thatās what I was getting at with my comment (that may have come before or after yours). The employer provided healthcare system we have in play has an interesting history. But itās part of what makes this country great!!!
paging @japhroaig and @anon67050589 ā¦someone mentioned BREAD!
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Next time they should just have a movie day, and splice in the news just before this scene:
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Employer provided healthcare is definitely not what makes this country great. Itās a big part of why healthcare is so expensive and itās the reason why so many poor people donāt have sufficient access to healthcare (why should access to healthcare be tied to your employment status?). But nothing about it is great, unless you are Martin Shkreli.
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Iāve been on both ends of this, as someone who lost their job because of a factory move and as someone on the transition team who had to make another such move happen. No, thankfully never been on a team that made the decision. And no, Iām not proud of doing that relocation work.
Some of the comments here are not realistic, at least in my experience. Like saying they should reduce costs in place or redesigning the products to be cheaper. They either do not have the local management, skills required, and available capital to make that happen or the factory would not have found itself into this circumstance. If your product has more than, say, 10% labor content (versus materials) then how can an American factory (commonly $75 to $125 loaded hourly rate) be competitive with a factory in Mexico (commonly $18 to $ 25 loaded rate)? They cannot. Do not ask about the labor rate in locations like Malaysia (yeah, we have a factory there too) unless you really want to be depressed.
Then the decision is more a factor of how the company values its human assets versus bottom line profitability. Iād like to think there are companies still out there that would not make this choice, would accept a lower profit margin to keep loyal people employed, but that is not what public-held companies do. The next CEO who does that gets the boot from shareholders who value return on their investment more than the human faces behind their shares of stock.
I can still imagine it for a privately held company but that attitude seems rare even among those. The founders of a company may have those very human ethics but the bean counters who take over when they leave tend not to.
This hits too close to home because I despise it yet do not have a good answer for it. For my part I can say I do buy American when I can. But I still want my own stock investments to grow.
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Northern Illinois, but all 3 of those locations are about 90 minutes outside of Chicago (Rockford ā second largest city in Illinois ā Carpentersville, and North Aurora). Hopefully theyāll inch closer in the near future.
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Carrier has been known for making a quality product, using quality materials. Thereās a reason steel made in the U.S. is more expensive than steel made elsewhere, such as in China. Itās not just about labor cost/hourā¦the product made in Mexico will be likely to be made with cheaper materials as well as supposedly cheaper labor (usually a less well educated workforce, which means more training and supervision costs as well as more mistakes, machine downtime, retooling due to errors, etc., which are not always reflected fully in the stated loaded rate).
The media hasnāt been so eager to cover the fact that a lot of U.S. factories are closing in other countries, either to go to better educated but still impoverished countries, where the labor costs are higher but the output more than makes up for it because they work smarter, or even to come back to the U.S. for the same reason. Quality control is a big issue. Thereās a lot more to the bottom line than just how much one worker costs the company per hour.
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Why are you solely focused on labor rates? What about executive compensation? I think someone above said above that the CEO of this corp makes 27 million per year. What if it were worker owned, and just for starters, that executive instead made 2 mill, and the other 25 were spread among the workers? Couldnāt the company then be still be ācompetitive,ā while also paying its workers more?
Why is the labor rate of the workers always the supposedly important issue, and not that of executives? Why is whatās good for the executives and shareholders always whatās important, instead of whatās good for the workers?
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Hi, former UTC employee here.
United Tech has been having its lunch eaten by Northrop Grumman (in particular) for the last 2 years. UTC has been trying to solve this by abusing employees every way it can-- oh, plus kicking out the previous CEO a year or so ago. They are not a place I would recommend anyone work (actually, neither is NorthGrum, another megacorp I once worked at).
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Executives have incentives that are tied to company performance (e.g. stock price, revenue growth, or some similar measure). Those incentives normally dwarf their regular compensation. As long as they are rewarded more for bottom-line profit or top-line revenue growth they will continue to behave in this way. What you are disparaging is our system for public-held companies. No disagreement there.
Do you think that exec should have taken a haircut on compensation in return for keeping that factory open? Youāre not alone. But how rare is that self-sacrifice among top executives? It seems like to be bred out of them in a Darwinian way (in order to get put in that position they have to be inhumane in this way).
Why do you (if you do) think that a product or factory should survive if they are not competitive in the market? If a competitor comes in and starts selling the same widget for less then you have to respond. if your quality is objectively higher you can try to market that difference. Some markets are all about price and others are more balanced about total cost of ownership. So it depends.
Was laid off in January from a different company in Kansas. Can relate. As well, I donāt qualify for unemployment insurance due to the fact I was in school before I got the job. Plus, my income tax return was surrendered to the Dept. of Education for Student Loan Debt. Triple threat!
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