A year later, DeWitt still reeling (Vise Grip moved to China)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20090929/NEWS01/709299956

Published Tuesday September 29, 2009
A year later, DeWitt still reeling

By Leslie Reed and Aaron C. James
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITERS

DeWITT, Neb. — Drive by the Irwin Industrial Tool plant these days and the only things you'll hear are the hum of grasshoppers, a flagpole rattling in the breeze, the distant rumble of a tractor in an unseen field.

The massive four-square-block factory that once propelled this little town is shuttered and silent.

Until last October, DeWitt throbbed with factory noise as hundreds of workers arrived each day to make the iconic Vise-Grip locking pliers and other tools.

Now townspeople can only remark how quiet their town has become.

“From three or four blocks away, you could hear the big machines, you got used to the big clunks and the vibrations,” recalled Larry Wattjes, a Village Board member and retired factory worker.

The plant was shut down to move the manufacturing of Vise-Grip pliers to China. About 300 people lost their jobs at a factory that once employed 600.

For nearly a year, townspeople have been on an emotional roller coaster as the plant's owner, Newell Rubbermaid, and state officials have searched in vain for another manufacturer to take over the plant.

Their hopes rose as each new prospect toured the plant, only to dwindle once more as each potential deal evaporated.

FULL story at link.

[HillbillyBob]

1. I think it is way past time for us. You remember We the People?

refuse to buy products that were American companies that have taken our jobs to China or Mexico or whereever teh hell they can get slave labor.
They are driving our wages and lives into the dirt.
They either bring the jobs back, and pay decent wages or they can't sell them here. period.

I have done this I have not been able to do with out all products, I have refused to buy levis and wranglers that were made in Greensboro and provided local jobs for around 100 years, generational jobs that paid well.
The corpses that owned the companies could give a shit about the employees that made their company what it is, but the share holders counted more. The prices of these products do not go down except maybe at walmart.

I call for a boycott of products that were made here and now are being churned out with slave labor.
It has not been quite so much of a hardship for me since I'm broke most of the time and have had to learn to do without..
I guess maybe we need to start growing flax in our own yard and go learn how to make homespun clothes.

I had to be an homeless indigent in order to get medical care..I am no homeless now almost 20 years later, but financially 850 a month ssd does not go very far either.

[Craftsman]

3. I bought a number of Vise grips made in the USA before they moved

because I know quality will drop. I will not buy the ones made in China. If all you get is cheap chicom crap then I will nto pay a premium price. The price has not dropped.

[Mudoria]

2. I'll never buy another pair of Vise-Grips