Union negotiations fail. Olin (Winchester) moves 1000 jobs.
Olin Corp. is moving its Winchester Centerfire plant to Mississippi after the Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 9. Union rejected their proposed contract for the second time. BND.com reports ...
The Clayton, Mo.-based company said that its Winchester Centerfire division in East Alton and the unit's approximately 1,000 jobs will be relocated to a new 500,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art plant to be built in Oxford, Miss. The relocation is expected to take place over several years.
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the union voted "no" Tuesday in the revote -- 593 to 470. The union also voted against this contract on Oct. 17 by a two-to-one margin. St. Peters said most workers refused to accept concessions because they believe the munitions manufacturer has been profitable.
Just 56% voted to reject the contract. From what I have read it does not sound like any of the parties were at fault. Winchester wanted to cut costs and just under half the union employees were willing to accept a wage freeze. A slight majority wanted to rather relocate (and risk their co-workers jobs) rather than earn less in the future. The real loser here is the community of East Alton, IL who are losing a major employer.
Olin recently reported that Winchester's profits have been declining ...
Winchester's third quarter segment earnings of $18.8 million are lower than the record earnings of $23.0 million achieved in the third quarter of 2009. The decline reflects the combination of lower commercial volumes and higher commodity costs.
I used to work for this company and was apart of the union that operated at the East Alton location in the building next to the centerfire plant. I must say that that union is very weak. That union doesn’t do much to help out it members except make sure that the pocket books of the union board members gets bigger. Olin doesn’t care about it employees either. I could give you examples of several times where the employee’s wellfare and personal life took a backseat to the companies agenda. I tell people that going to work there was like walking in and out of a Nazi concentration camp on a daily basis.
Winchester made less money recently then they did in 2009?
Duh…anyone that could sell guns or ammo made out like a bandit in the aftermath of the Obama election. This election was almost like a lottery winning for the gun industry in 2008 and 2009.
Yeah, Stoopid unions. How dare a democratically run organization demand a living wage, affordable benefits, a respectable retirement and a safe/respectful workplace for its members. Pretty soon everyone will think they are entitled to rights. stoopid commies. everything will get much better as soon as we are paid as low as Chinese workers. Go China!
Golly, it couldn’t be that Olin was going to move the jobs anyways and the contract proposals the union rejected were simply a way to rationalize why Olin executives were going to close the plant. Naw, it couldn’t be.
Poor Olin. Foreign owned company that has caused Revere Copper and Brass a company founded by Paul Revere to barely cling to life. My dad retired from Revere so I know all about Olin. F Olin!
Well said CJS3. And I say that as a Union member for the past eight years.
If you want to keep jobs in your state, it seems to me that the best way to do it is to make sure that your state legislature passes Right To Work laws. If organized labor can’t require businesses to hire union labor, union labor will have to improve itself to make their members more desirable than non union labor. That was the whole point of the original craft guilds that eventually became unions.
If the company is trying to just survive and this is just not more evidence of corprate greed with the working man having to pay the price. Then take a look at this site.
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2010/03/01/daily39.html
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Dave, I will respectfully disagree with you. In one way I disagree with you conclusion in your own statement is this, you said, “Most companies are moving to pay less wages but yet the prices are not falling.” You mentioned this as evidence of corporate greed. I would say maybe its an evidence of something else. I realize politics is not preferred here too much, so I will zero in on the economics of the issue at hand.
One issue is the falling value of the dollar. My wife works for a large cruise ship line and part of her daily jobs is knowing what the dollars strength is and what it buys as far as taxes and port fee’s in the many countries the ships stop at. She stopped by my place of work (I work for a buddy who has an E-Bat costume and clothing company), and discussion of Australia came up and we were wondering why Australia is still buying Halloween costumes and clothes at a “holiday pace.” She [my wife] discussed the falling value of the dollar and the strength of the Australia dollar as to the possibility (because they can buy much more now with it).
One article lays out the most recent adventure: “The Federal Reserve will sink $600 billion into government bonds in a bold plan that it hopes will drive interest rates even lower than they already are and start the chain reaction that finally creates jobs and invigorates the economy…. The announcement helped push stocks, which have been rising for weeks in anticipation of such a move, to their highest close of the year. But the program was immediately met with worries that it would not help enough and could backfire by causing inflation, creating asset bubbles and further weakening the dollar. Even some analysts who were not concerned about such a backlash said the plan was unlikely to do much good.”
This total on money printed up by the Fed out of thin air since the economic stagnation is about two trillion. Germany and China have criticized this latest adventure (see: http://religiopoliticaltalk.com/2010/11/inflation-warning-qe2/).
So I would say Winchester’s move is more out of survival in this economy that mere greed. This is Keynesian economics in overdrive. ANd this “greed” you mention was the subject of a short debate between Donahue and Friedman many yearn ago, enjoy: http://videorow.blogspot.com/2009/03/donahue-vs-milton-friedman-donahue-gets.html
I think after reading all the comments posted above it’s no wonder that America Is falling apart. It seems like it is impossible for people to stand together anymore even in these trying times. There are thousands of middle class citizens out of work for the very same reasons that Olin is moving (corporate greed). Most companies are moving to pay less wages but yet the prices are not falling. Just management getting more and bigger bonuses. Yet it seems like all we want to do is argue and bicker with each other about who’s fault it is when what really should happen is we all change our brand of ammo and force winchester to stay where there at.
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I also posted a link to this story on another site I am a co-blogger at:
http://unliberal.com/2010/11/09/1000-jobs-lost-thanks-to-unions/
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@guntotin_fool
As a resident of Oxford, MS I think that it should be noted that Winchester’s rimfire operations are already located in Oxford. So us dumb uneducated Mississippi folk are already making ammo.
This will be a great for Oxford and the surrounding area.
Thanks union workers!
Most people are not factoring in the military budget cuts looming now that the US has drawn down troop levels in Iraq and is on the verge of doing the same in Afghanistan.
@Mike and @Mehul Kamdar
Illinois is in some ways more hostile to the firearms/ammunition business than California. It’s no shock to me that they’d want to move somewhere friendlier and stop paying taxes to a state government that looks to be actively impeding them while being unable to balance its own finances.
@lance Ammunition. Winchester sold/licensed out the gun business to Browning decades ago.
Olin is union busting, and its no secret, sure 2010 volumes and profits were down, 2009 levels were unsustainable, being the midst of the post election bubble, no one was ever going to top that, particularly in the midst of >23% real unemployment. It will take the company 20 years or more to make up the cost of the relocation, and it will take longer to repair the damage that this will cause to its reputation.
This union is not ripping them off, its not causing them undo harm, or they would not be making annual profits in the mid to upper 70′s of Millions of dollars. (the 18 million is quarterly profits.)
Costs are up, so what, so are prices by large factors. .22 ammo is up by a factor of three, .45 WWB is more than double its pre election prices.
Its not like the market has been forcing Olin to sell at prices it can not sustain, its more like some harvard MBA got into the company and decided that just because he can hire some non union worker in Miss. for a few dollars less, that he will get the same productivity out of the Illinois worker he replaces.
Look, Illinois has one of the better school systems in the nation, Mississippi is dead last. Do you really think the off the street guy in Mississippi is going to be able to compete with the off the street working in Illinois, especially when the Ms worker is not going to get health, pension, and other union benefits. The workers they were getting in the Alton area are going to be some of the best around.
This is the stupidification of Corporate America. The Harvard business model has killed most manufacturing in the USA, because its all based on lowest price labor, not on the lowest cost per unit of production. America has always had great if not the greatest productivity based on people doing more, thinking more, and creating more, than others are able to. Part of that was teaching people who worked with their hands more than just what was needed to punch a clock and survive. We allowed bright people who looked at their work and discovered new and better ways to do their job to prosper in the work place. Pulling the plug based only on LCD factors like labor costs per hour mean the people in charge are as dumb as rocks.
and people wonder why America’s losing its manufacturing base.
Also,it should be commended that the plants and jobs are merely going to what was only briefly and formerly a foreign country, not China.
Good.
Though I live in Ill-annoy s many of us refer to this state, I do think that this is exactly what the unions and this state deserve. Thanks to the extreme stupidity that guides this state, it has lost more than 250,000 jobs over the past two years. Now, Alton – never a prosperous part of this state – ifs set to lose what few jobs it has left.
Yep, those jobs would be better relocated to a more decent part of this country. A state whose machinery has its brains up its posterior could do with the occasional kick in the behind to get it to think properly. The permanent relocation of these jobs outside the state is definitely one such kick.
the comments from american citizens concerning unions seem to indicate that american unions are some sort of nihilistic death cults.
while i doubt that is the case, i can only wonder why so many people seem to be under that impression. and if that is in fact the case, why would anyone join one?
Illinois is heavily taxed and seriously unfriendly to business. Many businesses are leaving Illinois, so this isn’t a big surprise.
people wonder why manufacturing is fleeing to the south?
Oinn will do fine in other states the North East is too regulated UNioned and taxed. About time the industry keeps itself safe in the south ratherthan the Northeast.
District 9? really?
Olin Mark IVs; best skis ever. Mine got stolen, and I stopped skiing. They had Look N77 bindings too. Sigh.
Interestingly, Olin started in 189-something making smokeless gunpowder; they bought Winchester in the 1930′s, or there abouts.
This is excellent news! Way to go Olin!
Is this there gun plant or ammunition plant? Because there USA brand and defensive ammo is doing well with law enforcement.
I have a pro union friend that I worked with, he thinks that his job is entitled to him because of labor unions, so I corrected him in the fact that being a part of a labor union does not mean his job is 100% secure. He fumed at me, saying a pro-union employer pays the best. He gets paid by the amount of materials he uses, so i regularly see him dumping perfectly good materials because they have “Imperfections”. The materials he throws out? 4 by 4s for constructing houses. They’re not “Straight enough” even when i show him they only have a slight curvature of 1 or 2 degrees
Look like I have yet another reasons to visit my parents down south. Bet my step-dad’s gonna apply, since he commutes to Oxford anyway. O-town could use some more money coming into it besides college kids, and the lafeyette/yalabusha counties could REALLY use some more jobs. And with the slow-downs at Borg-warner (formerly Hooly Carb) hwy 9, there is a large pool of technically certified and qualified line workers, cnc ops, et al.
Hotty toddy.
Heard about this on the radio yesterday. Stupid idiot unions always asking for more when the company starts making a little more money. I don’t want to see people out of work, I’ve been unemployed for 6 months now, but I can’t help but hope these unions drive themselves into extinction. But it’ll be a good thing for Mississippi.
Good news!
Unions get exactly what they deserve in this case.
Come on down to “free America,” Olin.
Sorry steve, but I don’t really see how this could not degenerate into a political debate. I don’t want to impose anything on you, but if you want your public to stay united instead of spliting into two camps, you should forbid any comments on this particular article.
“most workers refused to accept concessions because they believe the munitions manufacturer has been profitable.”
Sounds like they were trying everything they could to change that.
If you look at price trends in copper, zinc and lead, then compare that to the declining US economy, it seems virtually certain that ammo profits in the US market will decline in the near future. So Winchester is probably right.
At least they’re still going to be made in the U.S.
Also, Nadnerbus speaks the truth.
Considering the huge number of unemployed workers right now you’d think more folks would consider a temporary pay freeze over out right loosing their job!
Lower commercial volumes? Winchester ammunition has been virtually impossible to find while they ran big multi-year government contracts. I know it’s a terrible loss for Alton, IL but Winchester now has the opportunity to reconfigure their manufacturing to be more responsive to the commercial market. Hopefully. Maybe.
I grew up in the area, East Alton has been going downhill for a while. This won’t help.
I almost expect that a lot of the workers decided they’d rather live in a nicer town and keep their jobs.
Yep, the union has a vested interest in keeping up the us/them mentality and showing their strength and value by asking for ever increasing wages and benefits. Now the union will decry the greedy capitalist pig dogs who moved the plant and took all the jobs from the noble proletariat.
The purpose of any company is to make money for the share holders. Employees are necessary to to produce the goods that generate the profit. Once the union drives the price of the employees to the point where the plant and the employees can be replaced cheaper than the old plant and existing employees can be operated the reductio is at absurdium
Stupid unions. Who wouldn’t want to sell their house in this ‘booming’ market, take their kids out of school, move 200 miles away, start all over again and get paid less money? These people are fools to turn down such a great offer.
And what about poor Olin, what with gun ownership at a record high, two wars going on and the Obama Scare of 2008 / 2009, this poor company has hardly sold any ammunition. Right?
I don’t think I could live with myself if I only earned $18 million in profit, that’s practically nothing.
I work in a unionized corporation, and I can certainly tell you that the whole Us/Them thing takes over all reason sometimes. Both sides become certain the the other is just out to screw them, and spend more time fighting each other than making the company successful. The majority of employees, who are not really political, pay the price.
In the end, we are all replaceable, whether we want to admit it or not. The only question is your worth versus your costs. If you push your luck past your worth, you might just get cut loose. Even if you think you are protected by your union status.