Corporate Greed at its finest, and why (Buy American) sucks.Follow

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120102/electro-motive-london-ontario-lockout-120102/







CAT has not yet issued a response.

About CAT-

Apx Worth (Assets) - 64B
Apx Income (Net) - 2B

420 people laid off making 35$ an hour, more like 45 with benefits. This would be a savings of about 38 million for the year. A 2% net profit. 2%. That is pathetic. That is on top of their multi million dollar tax rebate for employing in Canada. They have basically come out and said we are going to keep the work here if you give up half your wage and benefits sucks to you living within in your means now with 300-400K homes and multiple vehicles and not being able to when we rape your livelihood. If not, we are moving this south of the border to people who will work for less and we can sell our product (thanks buy american).

1.3 Billion was paid out last year to their stock holders, 1.3 billion (646 Million shares @ 2 bucks a share) a 2% decrease from that would be 26.25 million dollars or 4 cents per share. Add on top of that about 5 million dollars in Tax Relief from the government and you have 31Million or so, now your shortfall is only about 7 million. Which is about 20%. Now you go back and ask the employees if they would take a 20% pay cut or going from 45$ to 36$ (including benefits) rather than 45$ to 22.5$ (including benefits.)

What a greedy bunch of *****.

Well I guess **** really does flow down hill

Just have everyone get kajillion dollar jobs in your booming oil fields and we'll take the boring ole manufacturing jobs. See? Win-win!

Ya, I'm finding it hard to feel bad that a company may be doing this because they want to move and open a factory in the US. Sure, I hold Canada in higher esteem than Mexico or China, but when I hear about China/Mexico losing a job to the US I'm happy, and I feel the same regardless of the country it came from.

I'm sure RDM here would gladly throw 400 US Factory Workers under the bus if it meant the company was opening a factory to provide 400 jobs to Canadians.

Especially flag manufacturers!

The made in America label makers really have it made in America.

Is it an American made bus?

So can someone tell a lazy Ozzie what the details of the Buy American system is?

Canada was given an exemption in the first round of buy american (which was tied to the stimulus) but the more recent one (I want to say late summer early fall) has not given Canada an exemption. I can only imagine it is out of spite, spite that the canadian economy overall (while jobs have not fully rebounded the amount of money earned by workers has increased) has rebounded and depending on how you gauge the economy over taken prerecession levels.

The problem with Buy American is that isolationism (which this practically is) has been dead since free trade markets have been established, with the worlds economy so tied together isolationism doesn't benefit the overall economy, nor the people of the nation on the same level it did in say the 70's or 80's.

From my understanding this applies only to raw materials and not finished products. I remember in the "original" Canada became outraged because the US refused some red dye put into steal because it was made in China. This sparked a small spat with Canada and the US with the US eventually inking a buy canadian "if you" have to provision.

Due to how NAFTA works it doesn't make sense to limit Canada or Mexico as the rules disallow the countries to undercut each other. Basically once the base price for a good or service has been set that is what all 3 countries work from. The only factor that plays into it is currency valuation, which over the past decade has seen American companies lose 30 cents on the dollar as the Canadian Loonie has climbed to parity from 67 cents back in '00.

I think the Buy American stuff in this case is just the company making idle threats, considering that my company is actually increasing production for American manufacturers across the USA. So either Electromotive (CAT) is dealing with someone who falls under the buy American provisions or they are just blowing smoke. But my company deals with GM almost exclusively and they received a hefty bailout. So really I dunno.

To me I think that Buy American is a feel good phrase uttered by washington to make it seem like they care, it isn't going to create more work for Americans, in fact it is probably going to cost jobs in the long run as people will just trade else where. (China)

Really though. If all someone wanted to do was ***** about corporate greed or the US, any thread would do fine for that.

This didn't sound right (I've bid on a bit of stimulus work) so I looked it up.