Saturday, December 10, 2011

Hanes Buys Missouri Factory, Then Plans to Move it to Mexico

image: Hanes is going to have order new tee-shirt labels

Globalization strikes again:
Barely a year after purchasing a manufacturing plant from a competitor, clothing maker Hanes is set to close down the facility, leaving many in the town scrambling for work at a time when jobs in small towns can be hard to come by.

Hanes Brands, which – at least for now – is based out of Lenexa, Kansas, bought the facility from Gear for Sports in August of 2010. Workers at the plant made sports-related clothing like college football t-shirts and other items. Cecilia Harper just started at the plant four months ago after being out of work for two years.

“I think it’s going to be impossible (to find a new job). I mean it took me this long to find this job. What’s it going to take and how am I going to live?” said Harper.

Chillicothe Mayor Chuck Haney says that he believes that the handwriting was on the wall for the plant the moment Hanes purchased the plant.

“It was like a bomb shell had been dropped on us,” said Haney. “That’s exactly the fact, that there was plans the day they announced the sale, the next day they began work to get ready to move this plant to Mexico.”

Haney says that the jobs at the Chillicothe plant paid between $8 and $12 an hour, much more than in Mexico.
Consider for a moment the implications for American workers if a job that only pays the pitiful sum of eight bucks an hour is subject to being moved overseas so the company can make more money. For all of his blather about his make-work, boondoggle jobs bill, why isn't President Hopey-Changey speaking up about practices like this? Oh that's right, because he is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. How silly of me.

The most telling quote in this article came at the end:
“How can I be self-sufficient if I have no income?” said Harper, who says that the American middle class is extinct. “I don’t think there will be a middle class. That’s what i feel. I feel there are going to be rich people and poor people and that’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Well, it might not have to be that way, Ms. Harper, if the non-rich would unite and angrily demand that this type of garbage be stopped. But they won't because far too many of them are either distracted by the corporate media machine or have actively been paid off by the ownership class to do their bidding.

I actually have a great idea for a teevee show. Give me an hour on MSNBC every night and I'd do a talk show where each episode I would highlight a corporate abuse like this one and then get the corporate flacks and the politician-apologists on there and skewer them. Doesn't that sound like it would be a ratings monster, given how so many people are feeling the pain of layoffs and foreclosures these days? Too bad it will never happen. Not because I'm a blogger nobody, but because the corporations that control the media would never let me within a mile of their studios.

What a sad state of affairs in modern day America.

9 comments:

  1. On the other end of this is the US consumer who will pick the $6 T-shirt over the $7 one regardless of anything else about the T-shirt.

    The US hit national peak oil in 1971. After that has been a series of funny games. NAFTA was about moving energy-hungry factories out of the US in exchange for fuel, a win-win answer to the question "how do we keep from going bankrupt paying for ever-increasing amounts of foreign crude oil?"

    Have you ever taken the time to see what it costs to run a factory vs. the money that can be made?

    ReplyDelete
  2. 22 % Unemployment Shadowstats.com
    40 % of the jobs are minimum wage
    30 % on social security

    Something tells me your "show" jumped the shark circa 2000 . So grow a pair youtube is free and computer camera's are cheap . I will even do off color commentary for your "show" . The masked cat wrap up. Think andy uncensored , unedited .

    Chesire

    ReplyDelete
  3. @ - Hey, Ches, as entertaining as that would be, it still wouldn't reach the masses. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. By skewering them I hope you mean they have to play "Running Man." Now THAT'S a show I'd stay home to watch!

    ReplyDelete
  5. In the current environment, the only way for the little guy to get ahead is to:
    1) start his/her own business, or
    2) own stock in dividend-paying companies, or
    3) join with others to form cooperative enterprises

    Nothing else is paying right now.

    The internet, at least for now, has made the entry levels for both 1 and 2 very low.

    Being a wage earner is the last thing you want to be in the US. All the cards (taxes, job insecurity, globalization) are stacked against you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "I actually have a great idea for a teevee show. Give me an hour on MSNBC every night and I'd do a talk show where each episode I would highlight a corporate abuse like this one and then get the corporate flacks and the politician-apologists on there and skewer them"


    Max Keiser seems to be successfully skewering the financial industry on RT, his videos are linked everywhere. He enjoys a very large audience and has plenty of knowledgeable guests on his show.

    You could well do the same thing with this topic. Go for it Bill, I think you could be very successful. Seriously.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Anon - thanks for the encouraging words! My biggest problem, actually, is that I'm not nearly as quick on my feet as it would appear from how I write. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. That's the best thing about youtube, Bill.. it's not live.. go for it mate.

    And take Ches up on his offer.. :D

    J.A.F.O.

    ReplyDelete
  9. There was a show like that. It was the "The Awful Truth". But looked what happened to Moore, you don't want to end up like that.

    ReplyDelete