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The World Socialist Web Site reports
[July 20], 338 workers completed their final shifts at the Carrier gas furnace factory in Indianapolis, Indiana. They were the first wave of 640 workers who will lose their jobs by December 22 at the plant, which President Trump claimed he "saved" through negotiations with Carrier's parent company, United Technologies (UTC).
"People knew Trump was full of crap", 13-year Carrier veteran Taj Longino told the World Socialist Web Site. "But they hung on to the hope because most were too young to retire or too old to get another job. Where are they going to go now? They're stuck in limbo and uncertainty", Longino said.
The fan coil department is being shut down and moved to Mexico, the worker said. "Counting the maintenance department, press operators, forklift drivers, and production line workers, maybe there will be 600 workers left, out of way more than 1,000. The other Carrier plant in northern Indiana is gone."
[...] The fate of the Carrier workers was exploited by both Trump and then-Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders after UTC announced plans to shut the plant and move production to Monterrey, Mexico where workers are paid $3.90 an hour. Both sought to divert anger away from the corporations and their relentless drive for profit by blaming "unfair trade" and Mexican workers for the loss of jobs.
Just ahead of his inauguration, Trump triumphantly announced that a deal had been reached with UTC that would keep the Carrier plant in Indianapolis running and save 1,100 jobs. He and Vice President Pence--the former governor of Indiana--celebrated the deal with United Steelworkers representatives at the plant on December 1. The agreement promised UTC incentives from both the federal and state governments of up to $7 million in exchange for UTC's promise to employ at least 1,069 people at the Indianapolis plant for 10 years. Additionally, the company promised to invest $16 million in the facility.
The deal did not represent a victory, Pyrrhic or otherwise, for Carrier workers, though. Only 730 of the 1,069 jobs that UTC vowed to maintain are in manufacture. The remainder are engineering and technical positions, which had never been slated for outsourcing in the first place. Moreover, the $16 million in plant expenditures would not go towards increasing the workforce of the Indianapolis plant. Greg Hayes, UTC's CEO, stated publicly in December that the money had been earmarked for increasing automation at the plant, flatly stating that this would result in fewer workers over time.
According to an AP story in US News & World Report:
Carrier announced last year that it would close the Indianapolis plant and cut about 1,400 production jobs in a move expected to save $65 million annually.
Trump repeatedly criticized Carrier's Mexico outsourcing plan. Weeks after Trump won the election, Carrier announced an agreement to spare about 800 jobs in Indianapolis.
About 600 jobs are still being eliminated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:18PM (2 children)
You can try putting the brakes on in America, but the rest of the world will carry on without you. You will just be putting yourselves further behind and helping China to overtake you faster.
You must know by now that the suicide rates werent much higher than other similar sized populations in other first world countries, people in the cities are much less suicidal than the poor farmers. So you are talking nonsense. China's standard of living has been rising sharply an continuously for 30 years. How about the US?
Don't like your chances of America acting rationally.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday July 29 2017, @01:39AM (1 child)
Further behind in what? The race to the bottom? Pollution so thick that smoking might purify the air?
But yes, China's standard of living is increasing. That's to be expected since they're on the developing side. I don't have a problem with that, as long as we don't regress the U.S. in the process (as we have been). Slowing it down a bit would still allow China to make progress while not harming the U.S.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @10:49AM
Further behind in leading the world and having the biggest economy, setting the global agenda/rules.
China is already slowing down, maybe you missed the news about the slowest growth there in decades and fears of hard landings a few years back. Didn't happen but they are growing slower and moving up the value chain relying less and less on exports and more on domestic services. The air has been getting measurably cleaner as well, still bad but improving.
The fundamental problem America has, is that it's prosperity for most people, relies on being able to buy cheap things from overseas. It relies on the fact you are exploiting foreigners. There is no way for you to have cheap stuff without other places making cheap stuff, it's just not possible. Your only choice is to ride the wave of global growth, try to stay on top innovate and invest for the future. Because once they catch up to your standards / wages / conditions etc, they will beat you with numbers, practical experience, infrastructure.
Trying to stop the US from regressing by bringing back shitty jobs and making everything more expensive seems like cutting off ones nose to spite ones face.