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Whirlpool has announced they will be closing their refrigerator plant – located in Fort Smith, Ark., – in 2012.  The closure of the plant – which manufactures side-by-side refrigerators, will be followed by a move of part of the factory’s production to Mexico.

City and union officials say that the plant closure will result in the elimination of between 1000 and 1500 jobs from the Fort Smith, Ark., area. Members of the United Steelworkers union – Local 370 – have pledged to do their utmost to convince Whirlpool to reverse the decision.

USW District 13 Director Mickey Breaux is said to have offered to Whirlpool to address any problems and help to preserve the impacted jobs, but the company declined his offer.

Here at www.fridgefreezersite.com our thoughts go out to the impacted families, and we hope local efforts to save the plant are successful. We implore Whirlpool to work with the local community to resolve this situation in a mutually beneficial manner!

Steven Jones
Keller, Texas

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Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) gave a speech this week describing his party’s positions on jobs and the economy going into the fall election. Summary: Our economic policies destroyed the country’s economy and millions of lives, but it made a few of my buddies really REALLY rich, so let’s do more of it.

I write about the specifics of Boehner’s call to return to disastrous trade policies below, but first I just have to say a few words about his economic ideas in general and how utterly wrong they are. In the speech Boehner said we have an “economy stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending.” But according to FOX News’ Wall Street Journal, yesterday the CBO reported that “the impact of the stimulus program estimated … the plan lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points.” In addition, the Washington Post reported, “The CBO said the act also increased the nation’s gross domestic product by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent in the second quarter, indicating that the stimulus may have been the primary source of growth in the U.S. economy.”

Boehner also said that “each dollar the government collects is taken directly out of the private sector.” This is the old “taxes take money out of the economy” argument, which is intended to trick people into thinking that the money just disappears instead of being used to pay for the schools, courts, agencies and infrastructure that enable businesses to thrive and drive the country’s prosperity. If you think that President Eisenhower’s spending on the Interstate Highway System “took money out of the economy” you really need to see someone about your problems and not take them out of the rest of us. (more…)

Stewart Acuff

By Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of America

Just a week ago I had the honor of being in Mt. Vernon, Indiana for a major protest against the closing of a large Whirlpool factory that had employed 1,200 people so they could move the work to Mexico.

In Minnesota, Polaris snowmobiles announced they are closing their factory in Osceola to move that work to Mexico.

Both these decisions made by Corporate America and our Financial Elite during the worst economic crisis and highest unemployment since the Great Depression 70 years ago.

These totally unjustifiable decisions reinforce the fact that the free market isn’t free, that free trade isn’t free, that the invisible hand of the market is a myth and that unregulated, de-regulated capitalism ultimately only works for the Financial Elite. (more…)

Dave Johnson

 By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

The economy is still getting worse — only more slowly. We lost “only” 36,000 jobs last month. We need to create 11 million new jobs just to get back to where we were before “free-market” conservatives took over our government and dismantled the protections and regulations that had protected us from this.

Jobs lost, communities devastated, lives destroyed. Over and over again. Yet with all of this going on companies like Whirlpool and Toyota are still closing factories, laying of American workers, and moving manufacturing out of the country! Toyota is closing the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California, which could lose up to 50,000 jobs across California. Whirlpool — recipient of stimulus dollars from the government – is closing a factory in Evansville, Indiana and moving the jobs to Mexico where people will be paid $70 a week and certainly won’t be buying anything made in America.

It’s the system. While the executives collect bonuses and tax breaks for their destructive actions We, the People have to pick up the tab. We pay the unemployment, the stimulus, etc. Our communities pay the cost of losing the jobs and the tax base, our economy pays the cost of losing the manufacturing capability. And the executives and private equity firms and Wall Street get rich. So of course they do more of it.

How crazy is this? In the middle of this terrible jobs crisis companies are still closing factories here and shipping the jobs out of the country. Why do we allow this?

Whirlpool and Toyota (and Wall Street’s $140 billion bonus pool this year) ought to be the last straw. It is time for We, the People to put our foot down and say not one more factory closed, not one more job sent out of the country! In fact, it is time to start bringing jobs BACK.

It is time to stop letting goods into the country that are made by exploited workers in areas with no environmental protections without a tariff to take away the price advantage gained from going around the protections that We, the People have fought so hard for.

There is only one way the country can earn the money to pay back what we borrowed from China, Japan and others. That is to make and sell things to others!!! THAT is what “trade” means. “Trade” does not mean allowing greedy executives to sidestep the laws and regulations and protections that We, the People fought so hard to get.

Look around us. Jobs lost, communities devastated, homes foreclosed, lives destroyed, governments going broke. All because of a runaway system that encourages the destruction of our economy. Our system actually encourages executives to close factories and lay people off! Executives make profits and get bonuses (that benefit from tax cuts) if they can figure out how to eliminate YOUR job or close a factory or cheapen a product or keep you from talking to customer support or make you pay an extra fee, etc.

Wall Street and executives benefit from this — and get tax cuts, tax breaks and subsidies for doing it. But the economy-at-large is destroyed by these same actions when they are widespread. On top of that, we know that when we lose the factories we have to borrow money to buy the things we used to make. But we give tax breaks instead of penalties to companies that do this.

Here are just some steps that We, the People can take to start turning this around:

• A border tariff on imports to remove the price advantage of goods produced by exploited, underpaid workers.
• A border tariff to remove the price advantage of goods produced in ways that harm the environment.
• A border tariff on goods from countries that are not democracies, to remove any pricing advantage gained from not allowing people to vote and set rules that benefit themselves.
• A border tariff on goods from countries that restrict workers from organizing to improve their wages and working conditions, to remove any pricing advantage gained from not allowing workers to bargain. (America currently doesn’t meet this standard.)
• Remove tax benefits and instead impose tax penalties and fines on companies that close factories here. Don’t let it be profitable to do this!
• Increase taxes on the big monopolistic companies to remove the advantages that help them destroy America’s smaller, regional and local businesses — the very job creators we need.
• Increase income taxes on high incomes to reduce the incentive to pursue short-term windfalls instead of long-term interests. Make it take a long time to accumulate a fortune. Making a fortune is great but it should be a reward for helping our economy and society, not destroying them.
• Break up the “too big to fail” Wall Street firms that wrecked the economy. And get the money back — all of it.
• Explore the use of Eminent Domain to keep factories in communities and workers in the factories.
• Formulate and follow a national economic/industrial strategy to build a new green manufacturing economy

Please add some ideas in the comments. I will have more to say on all of this.

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project..

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Johnson also is a fellow at the Commonweal Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream.

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Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson

The other day I posted Whirlpool Bites Hands Of American Taxpayers That Feed It saying, in summary,

• Whirlpool closes a plant in Evansville
• Taxpayers will shoulder the unemployment and other costs.
• All the local supplier, transportation and other third-party jobs are destroyed.
• Even more home foreclosures in the area as a result.
• Local businesses are stressed or have to go out of business.
• They are playing nearby Iowa against Indiana for tax breaks and subsidies to keep just a few of the jobs.
• Whirlpool is profiting from making all this someone else’s problem.
• And, of course, Wall Street celebrates the move.

A Whirlpool spokesperson responded, leading to the post, Whirlpool Exec Responds: The System Made Us Do It, taking a look at the bigger picture that forces our companies like Whirlpool to do these things that destroy people, communities and our economy,

“The spokesperson for Whirlpool is exactly right. It is the system that makes them do this. They are only following the market’s orders.”

I thought that was the end of it, but whoa, what’s this? Whirlpool Threatens Workers: Protesting Plant Closure Risks ‘Future Jobs’

A major corporation planning to shut down a factory in Indiana has warned its union workers that they’ll endanger their future job prospects if they protest the plant’s closing.

. . . Activists planned a high-profile protest for this Friday, with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka visiting the plant for the first time. But Whirlpool says the effort is futile — they are fully committed to shutting the plant down. The company, however, still seems quite wary of the potential for bad publicity. In a memo sent to its employees and passed along to the Huffington Post, Paul Coburn, division vice president for Whirlpool’s Evansville Division, offers a fairly explicit warning to his workers: If they join Trumka’s protest they would seriously risk future employment opportunity.

Threatening workers who show up at the protest that they risk future employment? Click through to read the entire report and to see Whirlpool’s letter.

And take action: Tell Whirlpool: Keep It Made in America and Save Our Jobs.

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This post originally appeared at the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF).

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Johnson also is a fellow at the Commonweal Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream.

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Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson

Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future  

Whirlpool, recipient of federal stimulus “smart grid” dollars, is closing an Evansville, Indiana freezer-topped refrigerator and icemaker production plant and moving the 1,100 jobs to Mexico.

Whirlpool knows that taxpayers will shoulder the unemployment and other costs. Closing a plant like this also means all the supplier, transportation and other third-party jobs go away. For example, 100+ Disabled Workers Could Lose Jobs

Whirlpool employees aren’t the only ones losing their jobs when the plant closes. More than 100 blind or disabled individuals could also be left jobless. The Evansville Association for the Blind has issued a public plea, asking businesses to consider using their employees.

 There will be more home foreclosures, and local businesses are stressed or have to go out of business. Whirlpool is profiting from making all this someone else’s problem.

Whirlpool is even playing nearby Iowa against Indiana, shaking the state down for millions to move just 60 of the 1,100 jobs there.

So, of course, Wall Street celebrates the move, the setting states against each other, the cost-shifting and the resulting “increase in margins.”

The workers are still trying to do something about this. Inside Indiana Business writes about a rally on February 26,

Organizers have invited guests including AFL/CIO President Richard Trumka and Jim Clark, president of the IUE-CWA union with which Local 808 is affiliated.

Employees with the least seniority are expected to lose their jobs first, March 26. The remaining workers will be let go until production ceases in early summer.

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President, writes:

The Whirlpool Corp. is closing a refrigerator manufacturing plant in Evansville, Ind., putting more than 1,100 people out of work. Even worse, Whirlpool will continue to produce these refrigerators, but not in Evansville and not anywhere else in America. They are planning to manufacture them in Mexico, where weaker labor and environmental laws make them “cheaper” for Whirlpool to produce.

This is outrageous and unacceptable, especially in light of Whirlpool’s profitability and the $19 million dollars in economic recovery money Whirlpool recently received from the federal government as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Those are OUR economic recovery funds, not Mexico’s.

You can sign their Whirlpool: Keep It Made in America petition here.

Will Congress listen?

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Johnson also is a fellow at the Commonweal Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream.

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Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson