Posted on Monday, 24th August 2009 by Patrick Dorwin
Typical union mentality, they voted themselves out of $40K per year jobs… That’ll teach ‘em, huh?
Breaking News: Union rejects Mercury Marine’s offer
h/t: Chad
Update: Bulletin: Mercury Marine says it’ll move jobs south
Update From Roland: Gov. Jim Doyle (D) Spews Useless Rhetoric While Waving Goodbye To Wisconsin Jobs
Doyle says he will “continue to fight” for these jobs, but “can’t do it alone.” DO WHAT MR. GOVERNOR? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO TRY TO SAVE THESE JOBS????
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29 Responses to “Mercury Marine union votes to kill the company in Wisconsin”
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August 23rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
The people of Stillwater Oklahoma are thrilled with the expected 600 new jobs, and likely the eventual addition of the company headquarters too.
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
That’s okay. Those who aren’t invited to the Oklahoma facility will have Obama and the Dems to take care of them. “Obama gonna pay for my house! He gonna pay for my car!”
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I have no sympathy for the majority of the 800 union members that voted themselves out of a job, but there are several thousand others that will also lose their jobs, they are the ones I feel sorry for. If I were an employer in the area, I would think long and hard about hiring any of these unemployed union members, no telling what they would foment in your workforce.
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
This is the true legacy of Jim Doyle and the Wisconsin Democrat party. Companies are vulnerable in this tough economy. Those States that are either not willing or too stupid to fight for them will lose them. Doyle clearly could not get the job done. Add to the mix record high budget deficits and unethical practices exemplified by the Chief Legal Counsel story, it became clear that Doyle was overloaded with baggage going into the 2010s. Being such a failure equalled the DPOW not wanting to back Diamond Jim.
Only question I have is: When Doyle goes to work for Talgo, will his job be in Wisconsin?
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Will the union leadership forgo their own salaries as a show of solidarity for their soon to be out of work “brothers/sisters?”
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I think the union should really show ‘em and all quit.
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I can’t believe the IAMAW did that.
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Indeed, the victims of this are the thousands in the FDL area dependent on MM for their business. Just another shameful union action by persons who have no shame.
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
This is how ghost towns are created.
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
How many people realize that the State of Wisconsin, like Michigan and several others, likely including California, is not going to return from this recession? The manufacturing jobs are not coming back, and unlike manufacturing work, service jobs do not increase in efficiency or productivity (much at all), or even technologically, which is after all the only source of increased standards of living.
Drive around almost any city in Wisconsin, including downtown Milwaukee, see the empty storefronts, and ask yourself if this might not feel weirdly familiar for anyone over 80 years of age.
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:04 pm
The comments at the Fond du Lac Reporter website are interesting.
Since I have been fortunate enough to have never been in a union, I don’t know if this is normal, but according to comments posted by laid off employees, they were prohibited by union officials from voting today. Seems to me that they had a stake in this too.
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Doyle = epic FAIL.
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I really have a hard time feeling sorry for any of these Union workers. Nice job, guys and gals!!
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
This is terrible news. No only will FDL loose all those jobs, but think of everything else that goes along with people working, earning wages and spending them in the community. If you don’t think other companies in the state have been watching this to see what happens, get your head out of the sand. Any company with a union has to be checking all their options right now and lining up the moving trucks. It might be sooner than you think before the last person leaving the state turns off the light.
August 23rd, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Although I was never in a union, I worked at alot of places that had unions. The stronger unions tell their people how to vote and if you go against their wishes you are out of a job.
Bet the people at Mercury Marine had no choice. It was either vote this way and “maybe” you would have something or go against our wishes and have nothing.
The absolute worst unions I’ve ever had to deal with were Aerospace military workers (which covers a huge array of even “non aerospace” jobs).
We had people pulling down over $130,000 a year without even a high school degree, while masters degreed electrical engineers were making 40,000 a year.
Course i’m sure someone from the pseudo right would have tried to get indians or chinese in to work as engineers so they could be paid $20,000 while management was pulling down $600,000 a year with a 6 week “mba” from University of the Chicago which included 2 weeks of tasting food from around the world (and that last line is no bullsh*t, it happened).
August 23rd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I truly struggle to understand what goes on in the minds of union members who actually vote this thing down. It honestly baffles me.
(Are the Democrats still the party of education adn science?)
I mean, how much arrogance does it take to assume out of nowhere that a person is with whatever he claims to be?
But I guess that’s how we ended up with government teachers earning among the highest paid per hour workers in America.
August 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I always thought $2,000 was a bit much for a 9.9hp.
August 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 pm
This is how Obama got elected. Most union memebers are lemmings. They will vote how they are told. The union bosses say jump and the union members say how high.
Same thing with election. The unions told their lemmings how to vote and you got Obama, who will also screw the union worker.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:44 am
This appears to be a case where what’s good for the union is not good for the local. That is, IAM will get to retain its reputation for toughness (and, dare I say it, intransigance) while the local union members will eventually (after using expensive taxpayer services) either re-train themselves or subsist at a much lower level.
What annoys me about union vs. non-union debates is the emphasis on the hourly wage rate, when what really kills the company is the union work rules, and the union retention-and-promotion rules.
The work and job classification rules are there to ensure that it often takes two or three people to do a job that one person would do at a non-union shop. There’s one union guy to tighten the fastener and another to clean the work, because the fastener employee can’t clean and the cleaning guy can’t fasten.
And then there’s the “union solidarity” contract provision, that requires promotion and retention be based solely on seniority. And how’s a company where working harder, smarter, or faster is discouraged to compete against one where it’s rewarded?
August 24th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
OK, I just got off the phone with a guy that works at Mercury Marine.. I knew that story was fishy when I heard it on the radio. Here is the skinny.
The workers get finished parts from Oklahoma already, the writing was on the wall. Mercury now also has a plant in china <= thats the kicker.
the workers knew their jobs were gone in 2 years when their contract was up anyway, so they were trying to get the 2% while they looked for other jobs, while theirs INEVITABLY went to china.
Interesting you don’t hear that angle.
August 24th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
speaking of Neocons.
did you read who the republitards are talking about running for california governor?
Carly Fiorina — the woman who single handedly destroyed Hewlett Packard and was given 14 Million dollars to LEAVE.
LOL… republican seriously have to start pulling their heads out of their asses and stop sucking up to big money morons in “bizzzneesss”… cause most of them don’t have a clue.
Why do you think most big business types love the former Hitlery healthcare and are secretly lobbying for Obamacare? So }they” don’t have to pay.
But when the idea that the owners of the companies (the stock holders) would want to vote on compensation, we’re told thats totally absurd and some form of “communism”.
August 24th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Oklahoma is a right to work state,
Wisconsin is not. Retirees with good pension and health benefits are leaving this Tax hell.
Wisconsin will continue to lose jobs, like Michigan.
You would think the MJS would understand what it means to get smaller and lose revenue. They should hire a reporter that understand how the private sector works, that reporter may even help the paper gain some readers.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
In theory, Labor Unions have always been Communistic “equalizers” which universally result in reduced productivity along with their insidious CLASS WARFARE! It is very hard for one to show enthusiasm or conscientiousness for his job when part of a union. You are to “do as your Union thug leadership says” in order to hamstring the employer according to “collective bludgeoning”! Look at the mob control of the Teamsters! Dave Beck, Jimmy Hoffa, and Roy Williams were all presidents and convicted of racketeering. There are other mob controlled labor unions and with the global market, Amerika is going to Hell in a Hand Basket because of them. It won’t be long now for them to really hurt like “Big Al” did after December 5, 1933.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Corbin is right on the money about the “Republitards” leadership in picking that incompetent wild Italian crook to run for governor on the GOP (Goofy Old Party). With the current leadership, you can expect just about anything; maybe even Arlen Spector!
August 24th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Corbin, you are ignorant of the IT industry between 1998 and 2002. HP’s merger with Compaq made the company strong in the middle of the bubble bursting in the tech sector. While every other manufacturer was going out of business HP remained strong enough to withstand the downturn and come out the other end stronger than any of it’s rivals.
HP is now THE player among American brands and evrybody with half a brain knows that she was right to buck conventional wisdom and merge with Compaq. Unless of course you are one of the hacks the DNC is using to try to throw dirt at arguably the most powerfull woman the IT industry has ever seen.
Ironic that the anti-spam word is “Moonbat”.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:03 am
David, you may be ignorant of the electronic test equipment industry of which Hewlett-Packard was on top since its early beginning in 1939. Corbin is right, she was typical of the new politically correct “women chief executives” who recklessly screwed up Hewlett-Packard. Compaq was a consumer brand of PC. Hewlett-Packard was a high-end commercial, professional line of electronic test equipment that could not be bought at Best Buy. The Hewlett-Packard name has been tarnished as a result of Fiorina.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
The spinoff of Agilent was a smart business move ordered by the board of directors. Under her watch the company managed to survive the worst tech crunch ever and emerge on the other side as the premier business server and desktop vendor.
The board spun off Agilent because it was impossible to grow that business. HP concentrated on what was actually growing within it’s business sphere. Of course they could have just continued to pour resources into a stagnant business market but the stockholders did not invest in HP so that it could stagnate.
September 6th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
[...] us. I noted one such link from BlogginBlue, a liberal site run by Zach Wisniewski. Citing BadgerBlogger’s post on the Mercury Marine [...]