Mercedes picks Alabama

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Mercedes picks Alabama - Plan to expand U.S. plant roils German workers

By George Frey ASSOCIATED PRESS

FRANKFURT

German carmaker Daimler AG said Wednesday that it will move some of its Mercedes-Benz C-Class car production to its Alabama plant to take advantage of a growing market, lower production costs and avoid currency fluctuations.

Daimler, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said production of the new generation of the C-Class should start in 2014 at the plant at Vance, near Tuscaloosa. It added that the move will maintain its competitiveness, utilize growth opportunities and let it respond to markets faster and with more flexibility.

Daimler said that the move would protect jobs in Germany over the long term and that new workers would be hired in Alabama.

In a conference call after the announcement, Rainer Schmueckle, Daimler's chief operating officer, said the company could add about 1,000 jobs to the current 2,800 in Alabama, starting in 2014. Further investments will be made there, though Daimler didn't provide details.

The carmaker said the Alabama plant will continue to produce the R-, M- and GL-Class vehicles, which are SUVs and SUV-like vehicles. The C-Class will be the first sedan produced at the Alabama plant.

[Craftsman]

1. Das Good!!!!

[Arctic Dave]

2. Now the tough part, will people will be able to afford them.

[NightWatcher]

3. are we becoming a 3rd world country when Europeans offshore their jobs to here?

"lower production costs"... ah yeah

[tularetom]

4. By 2014 nobody in the US will have a job

So who do they think is gonna buy these goddamn Mercedeseses?

[Brickbat]

5. It sucks when jobs are outsourced here. And when they're "insourced" to the south, that just sucks

even more. In a few years they'll be moved for "lower costs" elsewhere. Unless, you know, someone decided to stand up and do something about it.

Nah. Didn't think so.

[misanthrope]

23. Exactly...

...Many moons ago it was textiles. Companies from the north moved their plants to the anti-union South where they could pay people dirt wages for hard and dangerous work. The locals supplied a steady stream of labor content to take whatever "trickled down" off the end of a rich jerk's "member." Then, when it became cheaper to send those jobs to even poorer nations in Asia and further south in the Americas, those Southerners were left standing high and dry.

Now, other industrial nations are using the American South as their own little Third World and politicians in that region are content to sell out their constituents to lure those corporations there. But make no mistake, just like with the textile industry, this is all temporary in a race to the bottom.

[Brickbat]

25. What's all the more amazing is the throwing of tax breaks and incentives at these companies to get

them to build there. For some reason, no one sees what a short-sighted way of doing business this is. It wrecks schools and infrastructure and raises taxes on people who can't afford to pay them. Gah.

[misanthrope]

32. Tell me about it...

...I've been one of the consistently lone voices I know in the Heart of Dixie lamenting such. Check out the ludicrous amount of incentives given to German steel maker Thyssen-Kruppp for them setting up sweatshop 60 miles north of Mobile, Ala. I've even caught wind of some nefarious business practices from them just in the planning stages but NONE of the media outlets here want to inform the public because they are terrified of spooking what they see as the cash cow.

[SoCalDem]

6. Makes me wonder how much it's gonna cost the taxpayers

http://www.southernstudies.org/2008/12/taxpayer-aid-to-foreign-auto-makers-tops-36-billion.html



State give-aways to foreign auto makers top $3.5 billion
You could call it "Auto bailouts for me, but not for thee."

Last week, Republican Senators -- led by Southerners like Richard Shelby (R-AL), whose influence we had earlier been told was waning -- derailed the $14 billion bailout package for Detroit automakers, largely on the grounds that they didn't want to throw taxpayer money at the auto industry.

But a growing chorus of pundits pointed out that the Senators hail from states that frequently shovel large sums of public funds to foreign, anti-union auto makers like Mercedes, Nissan and Toyota in the form of "corporate recruitment incentives." The Institute and Facing South (see here and here) has been documenting these extravagant corporate give-aways since Southern leaders -- Democrats and Republicans -- ramped-up incentives to spur economic investment in the 1970s.

Our friends at Good Jobs First have been tackling the issue, too, and today have released an eye-opening list of the subsidy packages given to foreign automakers -- deals which, together, have cost state taxpayers over $3.6 billion.

Here's the list of big-ticket state give-aways:

(Alabama)
Hyundai, Montgomery, AL, 2002, $252 million
Honda, Lincoln, AL, 1999, $248 million
Toyota, Huntsville, AL, 2001, $30 million
Mercedes-Benz, Vance, AL, 1993, $258 million

The total figure of $3.58 billion is low. GJF notes that the figures are from news accounts written when the deals transpired which often under-estimated the total. For example, Alabama's give-away to Mercedes in 1993 -- when the state's school system was under court order for depriving students -- was later estimated at around $500 million once the cost of job training, land and other perks are included.

snip

[DainBramaged]

16. And you wonder what is waiting for the lawmakers and their relatives

regarding future employment promises, 'spiffs', and outright payments we'll never know about.......

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Romulox]

9. Sorry. I'm not buying a Benz made by scab "sons of the soil"...

Better? :rofl:

[Harry Monroe]

13. Why not just call a "scab" a "scab" and be done with it.

Why do you have to stereotype Southerners, you Yankee bigot! (I really have no clue where you're from BTW). Use of the word "scab" would have driven the point home well enough without bigoted embellishment. I belong to a Union in case you were wondering!!

[Romulox]

14. You're right. I apologize.

This is an issue that raises my blood pressure very quickly. You are correct, and I apologize.

[Brickbat]

18. LMAO.

+1.

[Retired AF Dem]

27. +1

what an asshole. I wish I made the $250,000 a year that a hillbilly couple I'm friends with make there every year.

[Kalyke]

10. First, I would never own a foreign car (even one somewhat made

in the United States - the profit goes back to Germany - and the parts are expensive as hell to replace).

But to call all us Southerners "hillbillies" in a derogatory manner is uncalled for.

Hillbillies are actually quite intelligent. They supported the Union in the Civil War and they know how to live off the land.

Finally, Alabamians are not hillbillies. They live in the flatlands. Hillbillies would be those of us from the Appalachian mountains and foothills.

[Romulox]

12. I come from hillbilly stock (as do many Michiganders). I know of what I speak.

Alabama and Mississippi are the last places on earth that the rest of the US should emulate. I'm sorry if the truth hurts, but there's a reason labor is so cheap down there.

edit: Culturally, most of the people I've known from Alabama are actually "rednecks"--but I don't use that term here on DU, as it is so misunderstood. I don't think "redneck" is automatically pejorative or associated with racism, but that is what most people take the word to mean. So "hillbilly" is a crude stand in.

[Kalyke]

20. See... redneck would be appropriate.

Hillbilly is not.

And, not all of Alabama is backward as hell - Huntsville is the home of a NASA installation and Space Camp. Quite a few intelligent people in that neck of the woods.

And, I love Mississippi. If it weren't for them, Tennessee would be last in everything. :)

[Harry Monroe]

17. :"Kinfolk said, 'Jed move away from there!'. Said 'Californey is the place you ought to be..

..so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly".

[Freddie Stubbs]

15. Doesn't there have to be a strike for some one to be a scab?

:shrug:

[Romulox]

19. Ummm, no.

See 3b(1); (4)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/SCAB

[annabanana]

11. "protect jobs in Germany over the long term ". .

Not that I mind Americans getting jobs... but do you think the Germans will fall for this line of crap?

[treestar]

30. Aren't we "stealing" their jobs?

Next thing you know we'll be in Germany on H-1Bs!

:rofl:

[Blue_Tires]

21. in case someone wants to see the view from the other side:

Mercedes-Benz workers protest possible factory move to US
Published: 1 Dec 09 10:59 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/money/20091201-23641.html

Metalworkers’ union IG Metall on Tuesday called for workers at the Mercedes-Benz factory in Sindelfingen to protest against the company’s possible plans to move production of its luxury C-Class vehicle to the US by 2014.

Daimler AG, which owns Mercedes-Benz, will likely decide on the move on Tuesday, and the union fears that it could mean the end of more than 3,000 jobs at the plant in Baden-Württemberg.

“The production of the C-Class is of central importance for the workers at Sindelfingen,” works’ council head Erich Klemm said on Monday.

At the protest on Tuesday he threatened to “turn the lights off” at the factory if the factory change moves forward.

Several thousand workers were on hand at the country’s largest car factory for the protest, including many from carmaker Porsche, auto supplier Bosch, and other businesses that would be affected by the move.

A factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama is said to be in the Daimler’s sights for further C-Class production due to a favourable exchange rate and better sales market. The company currently build four out of five of its vehicles in Western Europe, but sells only 60 percent in the region.

Some 20,000 people work at the Sindelfingen factory, 4,500 of whom specialise in C-Class production.
=================
=================

It goes without saying the German unions are very strong, organized, and have a range of legal rights unheard of here...

[Romulox]

22. Alabamans should be careful about getting too cozy with Benz; the company RAPED Chrysler...

Left it in a heap, then sold it to a venture capital fund. :hi:

[Xithras]

24. Oh bull.

Chrysler was on the verge of ceasing to exist in 1998 when Daimler bought them, and Dieter Zetsche almost single handedly brought the company back from extinction after Daimler put him in charge. American workers loved the guy when he was in charge over here.

The problem was simply that Daimer global became a very broken company under the former CEO, and Chrysler rapidly became the only profitable part of the company. When the old CEO was fired and Zetsche was put in charge of Daimler globally, everyone expected him to do for Mercedes what he did for Chrysler. He couldn't. Daimler is still in serious financial trouble today.

There's no questioning, however, that Chrysler is better off today because of the Daimler purchase. Why no questioning? Because every one of the business analysts who have looked at the Chrysler books agreed that they'd have gone under back in 1999 if not for the takeover. At a minimum, the buyout bought the company a decade of extra life.

[Romulox]

26. Revisionist nonsense. Benz sold the acquisition to the US gov't as a "merger of equals"

Moreover, Daimler paid $37 billion for Chrysler--sold it for $7.4 billion. Where did $30 billion in value go? It was squandered by the ineptitude of the "more equal" of the two partners.

And the rest is history. :hi:

[Xithras]

28. That was marketing mumbo jumbo to make Americans feel better about being bought by the Germans.

There was no "equality" in the purchase, and many in 1998 were shocked that Chrysler fetched such a massive price...they were widely considered to be a has-been company on its way into the history books. Daimler pulled a sales job in 1998, because many Americans were furious at the thought that an "American" company could be bought and owned by "furrners".

I bought a baseball card back in 1991 for $20. I had it priced recently and discovered that it's only worth $4 today. Did I squander $16 in value? No. The original $20 price tag was based on an assumption of future value and returns...just as the Daimler purchase of Chrysler was. When it became clear that the projected future returns weren't going to materialize, the REAL value of the card declined. When Daimler, and everyone else, realized that Chrysler was never going to become the international automotive powerhouse that they were hoping for back in 1998, it's value declined in the same way.

Econ 101.

[Romulox]

29. Nope again. Daimler paid $37 BILLION US dollars for Chrysler. Sold it for $ 7B

The number don't lie--either Daimler pillaged that value from Chrysler, or it squandered it. Anything else is an attempt to deflect from the basic facts of the matter.

As to your baseball card analogy, it's beyond ludicrous. You buy a baseball card and hold it. It's called speculation. On the other hand, you must build an automaker, both literally inasmuch as each vehicle is a new challenge, and figuratively in terms of the overall business.

"When it became clear that the projected future returns weren't going to materialize, the REAL value of the card declined. "

Good job in glossy over what happened in between--namely 9 years of inept management by Daimler Benz!. The bottom line here is the bottom line. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing stinks like limp excuses for obvious failure! :hi:

[treestar]

31. OMG they are MOVING jobs TO the US

And this thread is full of negativity!