Via Paul Constant, the Guardian has another heartbreaking article on Bain’s ongoing assault on America:
The shock of losing a precious job in a town afflicted by high unemployment is always hard. A foundation for a stable family life and secure home instantly disappears, replaced with a future filled with fears over health insurance, missed mortgage payments and the potential for a slip below the breadline.
But for Bonnie Borman – and 170 other men and women in Freeport, Illinois – there is a brutal twist to the torture. Borman, 52, and the other workers of a soon-to-be-shuttered car parts plant are personally training the Chinese workers who will replace them.
It’s a surreal experience, they say. For months they have watched their plant being dismantled and shipped to China, piece by piece, as they show teams of Chinese workers how to do the jobs they have dedicated their lives to.
“It’s not easy to get up in the morning, training them to do your job so that you can be made unemployed,” said Borman, pictured, a mother of three who has worked for 23 years at the Sensata auto sensors plant….
But, in the midst of the 2012 presidential election, Freeport is different. For Sensata is majority-owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm once led by Mitt Romney, that has become a hugely controversial symbol of how the modern globalised American economy works. Indeed, Romney still owns millions of dollars of shares in the Bain funds that own Sensata.
So as Sensata strips out costs by sacking American workers in favour of Chinese ones, the value of Romney’s own investments could rise, putting money into the pockets of a Republican challenger who has placed job creation in America at the heart of his bid for the White House…
Corporations are people, my friend! And Romney actually cares about those corporate “people” — unlike the unfortunate meatsacks who aren’t his fellow Bain shareholders.
raven
The Freeport Pretzels!
Chris T.
GUY IN CROWD: It goes into their pockets!
ROMNEY: Whose pockets?
The correct answer to this is, apparently:
GUY IN CROWD: Your pockets!
Baud
Sensata employees should retroactively dedicate their lives to another line of work. Problem solved.
rikyrah
this is who Willard is.
this is Vulture Capitalism
Uncle Cosmo
Jeebus cripes, the ads write themselves. Hell, they crank the camera & do the uploading!
By the time Team Obama gets through with Robot/Undertaker, they’ll be lucky if they’re not both looking for a country with no extradition treaty with the USA…
Uncle Cosmo
Jeebus cripes, the ads write themselves. Hell, they crank the camera & do the uploading!
By the time Team Obama gets through with Robot/Undertaker, they’ll be lucky if they’re not both looking for a country with no extradition treaty with the USA…
Gian
I seem to recall at the end of WWII the Soviets packed up what working factories they could from lands they took as part of the spoils of war.
here, our captains of industry have surrendered the factories without a fight, just a hefty bribe
beltane
But Mitt’s going to Restore America’s Promise because how can you break your promise if you didn’t restore that promise in the first place.
Has there ever before been a presidential candidate from a major party who was so openly hostile to American interests? I guess you could say John Breckenridge in 1860 but that’s the only one I can think of.
Spaghetti Lee
Wow. I’ve got family in that area. They’re all retired farmers, but I hope this doesn’t hurt them too bad indirectly.
Uncle Cosmo
Jeebus cripes, the ads write themselves. Hell, they crank the camera & do the uploading!
By the time Team Obama gets through with Robot/Undertaker, they’ll be lucky if they’re not both looking for a country with no extradition treaty with the USA…
Citizen Alan
I feel so naive. I honestly thought that Bush was the worst it could possibly get, but damned if the GOP hasn’t found someone even more vile and degenerate that the Deserting Coward. Bush got us into a war because of a twisted Oedipal complex. Romney will get us into a war because his accountants assure him that his portfolio will grow as a consequence.
amk
That’s all fine. So who they gonna vote for ? Isn’t voting against their own interest an american specialty?
amk
That’s all fine. So who they gonna vote for ? Isn’t voting against their own interest an american specialty?
beltane
It’s like an echo chamber in here.
El Cid
THIS IS SO IRRESPONSIBLE BOTH SIDES DO IT WE NEED TO HAVE SUBSTANTIVE DEBATE WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SLUR HIS CHARACTER THINGS HAPPEN FOR MANY REASONS ETC
Anoniminous
This has been going on since the mid-60s. Thirty years back, when I was a pinko-commie DFH and screaming the US manufacturing base was being eroded, the US was undercutting the basis of Middle and Working Class prosperity, I was told the US could lose those icky jobs because the Exceptional Exceptionalityitude of the USA! USA! USA! meant more better jobs would rain down from the sky. Exactly where those jobs where to come from was never clearly explained, but what the hell: it was a good line of bullshit.
geg6
Jeebus. These fuckers aren’t just vultures. They’re goddamned sadists. When do we finally start sharpening the pitchforks and guillotines?
mainmati
That this happening now and in this most cynical way – the to-be-unemployed training their foreign replacements is truly obscene. This should wind up in a Priorities USA ad at the least since it won’t end up in the news media.
Elmo
@geg6:
Why do you think they should be sharp?
Hill Dweller
Willard will do everything he can to avoid paying taxes on the extra money he receives from the outsourcing of these jobs.
Bill
My understanding is that the plant is and has been a profitable enterprise.
Apparently not profitable enough.
Linnaeus
Welcome to capitalism.
Yutsano
@Bill: Don’t be silly. The plant itself need not be profitable, just the massive fees for its gutting. Where are your priorities man?
Karen in So Cal
@Citizen Alan: I know what you mean. I honestly thought Romney was the “least bad” of the R candidates – boy was I wrong.
Also, I’d like to see this in an ad somewhere. It’d be devastating.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I saw that yesterday and figured I’d just missed the thread about it here. Since I’ve been working on actual work.
I hope it gets a ton of play. It’s exactly the kind of message people who don’t “get” vulture capitalism need to hear. Right down to the outsourced job holders training their replacements.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
“Now remember, Mr Yue, it’s important when using this machinery to periodically throw a wooden shoe into the gears. The fiber in the shoe helps lubricate the cogs. You should do so immediately you get home to China, and keep on doing it, especially if there are any breakages…”
Uncle Cosmo
(FWIW apologies to all for the multiple post above–connection problems…)
k488
Just remember, The Soylent Green Corporation is people, my friend.
Cap'n Magic
@mainmati: Makes you wonder why they didn’t all walk out en masse when the deal was announced that the plant was shutting down and moving to China-especially when told they’d have to train the staff. Sadly, its all too common these days; whether it be machines or software….
Karmus
@Karen in So Cal:
Same here. It’s as if the R party is caught up in some mathematical anomaly where there is no “least bad”.
I’m already rubbing my hands together, Mr. Burns-style, in anticipation of this.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Cap’n Magic:
The company usually offers bonuses and other incentives to get key staff to stay until the changeover is complete, and money is money.
I remember one company I worked for fired their entire warehouse staff prepatory to moving the warehouse to Tennessee, but poor planning meant they then had to get through six months using temps. Not to mention that a Fed Ex truck full of expensive computer equipment was mysteriously hijacked a few weeks after the mass firing.
karen marie
@Caz: Companies only have constitutional rights if you consider them to be people, which I do not.
karen marie
@Cap’n Magic: And then what? They would have no paycheck and no unemployment.
sherlock hound
@Cap’n Magic:
Easy.
If they quit outright, no severance and likely no insurance, either. I am in IT and I have heard dozens of accounts of this. Mitt did not invent this but he can run with this as well as any corporatist.
I hope it gets in an Obama ad too, but for years this has been happening in IT and everyone shrugs. The outsourced “were too expensive” or weren’t “dynamic enough”. Where are the trolls to say that Bonnie should “reinvent herself”? Every thread on outsourcing I ever read always seems to blame the victims sooner or later.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I know what that’s like, having trained the Indian workers who replaced me.