Whirlpool to Move Production to Mexico,
Despite Appeals to Keep Jobs in the U.S.

By Harry Kelber

   While labor, community and religious activists from six states held a giant rally in a last-minute appeal to  Whirlpool  to keep its production facilities in the United States, the company did not budge from its plan to close down  its Evansville, Ind. operations  and  open a new plant in Mexico that would employ 1,100 workers  to produce its dishwashers, refrigerators and other kitchen appliances.

   In addition to the rally, Evansville residents sent petitions with a total of 110,000  signatures and made more than 1,700 phone calls to Whirlpool, all with the same theme: “Make It in America.”  But company executives ignored their plea, even though they had accepted millions of dollars in federal stimulus money.

   On Thursday afternoon, March 25, the Evansville community, the victim of the Whirlpool plant closing, turned out to say farewell  to the first group of 500  laid-off workers who, on the next day, would walk out of the plant for the last time.

  AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a principal speaker at the rally, told the protesters: ”When we put people back to work, we put America back to work. That’s what we’re fighting for in Evansville. He called the Whirlpool workers “heroes” and said their fight is the same as that of workers across the nation: to create good jobs here and now “to rebuild the foundations of our society and restore our middle class.”

By all accounts, the rally and march of the protesters were impressive and noisy, but orderly. There were no reports of violence or clashes with the police,  no attempts at widespread sit-ins or efforts to occupy the closed plant. When it was over, Whirlpool, like hundreds of other companies,  had picked up stakes, abandoned American workers and moved to poor countries  that they could easily exploit.

How American Workers Lost Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs

    Ever since former President Bill Clinton pressed Congress to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),  U.S. corporations have had a field day in moving jobs out of the United States  and displacing American workers for cheap foreign labor.

  According to AFL-CIO sources, two and  a half million manufacturing jobs and more than 850,000 professional service and informational sector jobs have been lost since 2001. Goldman Sachs estimates that between 400,000 to 600,000  white-collar service jobs have moved overseas in the past few years.  In 2003, Delotte Research found one-third of all financial institutions are already sending work offshore, with 75 percent reporting they would do so in the next 24 months. Since then; outsourcing in manufacturing and financial services has increased as corporation seek a  competitive advantage by slashing labor costs.  

For example, a software programmer in the U.S. can  earn $66,000 a year, compared to  $10,000  a year in India;  a U.S. mechanical engineer might be paid $55,000, while his or her counterpart in India would earn a mere $5,900.

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It’s a fact that the AFL-CIO and Change to Win have never really challenged the exodus of good-paying jobs to foreign labor markets. Sure, our leaders have denounced outsourcing in high-flown rhetoric, but have avoided doing anything to save the hundreds of thousands of jobs that corporations are continuing to send out of the country.

At the rally, Trumka admitted that “we also need a plan that keeps good jobs at home.” It’s pretty late in the day to come up with such an obvious conclusion. But, Brother Trumka, you and the Executive Council should be able to figure out ways to discourage corporations from outsourcing American jobs. If you can’t, please call me and I’ll advise you.—Harry Kelber