More bad news, GKN to lay off hundreds at it's Hazelwood plant. Jobs moving to non-union plant in Alabama.

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news ... j=76281041

Well, Boeing’s STL congress/representative Cori Bush wants to reduce Defense spending.
So you reap what you sow.

^^How much do you want to bet the "not profitable" means they want to shift production to non-union and less-union sites in Alabama, and South Carolina? Their plants seem to be in roughly two sorts of locations: old aerospace hubs like St. Louis, San Diego, and Seattle, or small cities in the sun belt. Per their own website they've got about twenty plants around the US. I haven't dug too deep, but the Orangeburg SC plant seems to date to 2012. Lovely little town with a gorgeous botanical garden, actually, but I suspect it's not a hotbed of union activity. I don't think Bush or her policies had much to do with it. It's probably the same story as Boeing.

The  question is, does the region have the job availability/capacity to absorb these 900 jobs?  I wonder if Boeing would purchase this plant/land considering the proximity to their plant..... literally right next door. Obviously that wouldn’t mean the workers go to Boeing, but at least there wouldn’t be a large vacant property on that site.

So a few quick corrections - per the BizJournal article, it's only 317 bonding mechanics (which is still a huge number but not 900). And they are, in fact, shipping the jobs to a plant in Alabama where workers are paid much less. The article quotes IAM District 837 President Steve McDerman's statement (emphasis mine):

GKN gathered its employees, some of the highest-skilled aerospace workers in the country, and informed them that the company planned to kick its more than 300 bonding mechanics to the curb and ship their jobs to plants where workers are paid nearly half their wages.

The silver lining is that it sounds like this is only the Composites Department and not GKN's entire St. Louis operations. The bad news is that it still is 300+ highly skilled workers who are about to be without jobs.

That’s odd  since other outlets are reporting the entire plant is closing by 2023.  The Fox 2 article references a statement from GKN.

They were supposed to move those jobs to the south a few years back. Are you sure that the article you’re not referencing is from 2016?

Welp. You're right, I did.  Scratch what I wrote in its entirety. Didn't even realize that your first post was from 2016, but your follow up was 2022.

whitherSTL wrote: ↑

Feb 11, 2022

Well, Boeing’s STL congress/representative Cori Bush wants to reduce Defense spending.
So you reap what you sow.

So defense spending should be a jobs program now?

Baltimore Jack wrote: ↑

Feb 11, 2022

whitherSTL wrote: ↑

Feb 11, 2022

Well, Boeing’s STL congress/representative Cori Bush wants to reduce Defense spending.
So you reap what you sow.

So defense spending should be a jobs program now?

What if we bomb our own cities? Then we get defense jobs and construction jobs. Stupid Cori Bush didn't even think of that.

Anyway, you can put this on Biden and Obama for refusing to make unionizing easier, which encourages other states to undercut our labor like this.

Yep its ALL Biden's and Obama's fault and Clinton got off scott  free? rolls eyes

"Give me the facts and I will twist them to fit my argument"
Winston Churchill

chris fuller wrote: ↑

Feb 11, 2022

Yep its ALL Biden's and Obama's fault and Clinton got off scott  free? rolls eyes

"Give me the facts and I will twist them to fit my argument"
Winston Churchill

I didn't mention Clinton because he was elected 30 years ago but yeah, him too and also virtually all US political leadership for all time.

whitherSTL wrote: ↑

Feb 11, 2022

Well, Boeing’s STL congress/representative Cori Bush wants to reduce Defense spending.
So you reap what you sow.

Entire military wants to reduce defense spending, Air Force has like 40% less airman since gulf wars but just 5% less space.  They would love a BRAC round or 2.

Scott AFB would probably stick around thanks to Illinois moving its NG from O’Hare to here and it’s home to US Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command but the wing that operates the installation (375 Air Mobility Wing) just ferries VIPs around the country in a dozen or so small passenger jets.

DogtownBnR wrote: ↑

Feb 11, 2022

The  question is, does the region have the job availability/capacity to absorb these 900 jobs?  I wonder if Boeing would purchase this plant/land considering the proximity to their plant..... literally right next door.  Obviously that wouldn’t mean the workers go to Boeing,  but at least there wouldn’t be a large vacant property on that site.

Yes.  Our 3 manufacturing facilities in St. Louis have over 80 openings (of approximately 600) and have no applicants to fill them.  We would like to (need to) add a third shift at 2 sites, again labor shortage.  Actively discussing adding a 4th location here to support our growth, but sadly are now considering alternative locations due to the lack of labor.  We are so desperate, we are monitoring layoffs/closures such as this to fill our openings.

^Good! I hope you can hire folks and put them to work. My dad did some temp work out at GKN after he took early retirement from Monsanto. I seem to recall him saying most of the folks he was working with were former McD/Boeing guys. And at least at that time the majority of the work GKN was doing was for Boeing. (Making F-18 tails, if I recall the story correctly.) Boeing Defense had some bad years there, but hopefully those are behind us and you'll keep winning contracts going forward. Good luck!

^Tulsa's Black Wall Street too.

Great news for GKN workers.  

Breaking News: Boeing's purchase of GKN keeps Hazelwood factory open, saving 550 jobs

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... 2024-04-26