Labor & Employment Law

Community to Rally for Laid-Off Whirlpool Workers

By James Parks

Members of the Evansville, Ind., community will come together Thursday afternoon to support the first group of laid-off Whirlpool workers. Some 500 of the workers will walk out of the plant Friday for the last time and head to the unemployment line as their jobs are shipped away to Mexico.

Just as they did last month, union members and community and religious activists will rally behind the workers to show that the layoffs will have serious consequences for the entire area. 

Last month, more than 5,500 workers and community and religious activists from at least six states converged in front of the Whirlpool plant, led by members of IUE-CWA Local 808, to deliver the message to “Keep It Made in America.” But the company, which received millions in federal stimulus money, moved ahead with its plan to abandon U.S. workers and send 1,100 production jobs to a new plant in Mexico.

On the AFL-CIO’s Good Jobs Now website, Whirlpool workers say this kind of corporate greed is destroying the American economy. Tom Wright, who is two years into Whirlpool’s four-year electrical apprenticeship program, now finds himself “halfway to nowhere.” He issues this warning to workers everywhere:

The Whirlpool plant’s closure in Evansville should be a wake-up to the rest of the country. This is not just happening to us?you may be next.

Joanne Wallace, a 19-year worker at Whirlpool, wonders what U.S. jobs will remain for her grandchildren:

Will they be able to stay in Evansville and find work? Where is our community headed? I am sad to see Whirlpool go and extremely apprehensive about the future.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 24, 2010 (boomark / email).