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Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Merry Xmas: Essroc Laying Off 10% Of Its Workforce
That's the bad news from Nazareth Patch. In October, Congressman Charlie Dent had warned that a Staten Island stimulus project was paving the way for Cementos Lima, a Peruvian cement manufacturer, to take away jobs here in the Lehigh Valley.
15 comments:
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Any evidence whatsoever that Cementos Lima is responsible for the job cuts? Or is this a new logic formula.... A + Charlie Dent Said So = Evidence
ReplyDeleteDent did warn folks. No one seems to listen. Mack, Allentown Metal Works, the list goes on and on. Was surprised no national news picked up on the AMW closing especially since it was such a big story a year ago.
ReplyDeleteHeart goes out to the people affected. I think the general rule is that layoffs (even those necessitated by budget cuts) should not occur b/w Thanksgiving and the New Year.
ReplyDeleteThese layoffs are unnecessary. The Summer of Recovery fixed everything.
ReplyDeleteSincerely,
The One
From the Nazo Patch article:
ReplyDeleteThe layoffs come at a time when Northampton County -- like the rest of the country -- is struggling with high unemployment. The most recent numbers put the county's unemployment rate at eight percent.
This is the first time Essroc has laid off Nazareth area employees since the 1980s, Barbesta said. These recent layoffs were caused by the general downturn in the nation's economy.
"It's not like no one is buying cement, but production is down," Barbesta said.
Looks like there's zero evidence this has anything to do with Cementos Lima. The terminal's not even completed yet so there's no way it would be cutting into their current production. At any rate, Dent's pro-free trade, has always been pro-free trade, and this is what free trade does. Cementos Lima can make cement cheaper than Essroc? Cement production moves to Peru. You can't support the policy and then puff up your feathers and pretend you're some jobs-protector when there's consequences. That's the definition of hypocrisy.
At any rate, this pretty clearly is the result of weak demand for cement in general. Weak sales are the problem all businesses across the board <a href="http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/sbet-single-most-important-problem-updated-for-november-2010/>cite as their number one issue</a>. If Dent actually cares about businesses in his district, he'll get busy pushing for more stimulus. If the government repairs a bunch of bridges in PA, that's more cement sales for Essroc.
Businesses cite weak sales as their number one issue. I cite screwing up text links as my number one issue.
ReplyDeleteYou just don't get it. If the general demand for cement is weak, the last thing you do is encourage a foreign company to come in and finish you off. But that's what has happened.And Dent did warn about it in October. nd in October, you said he was full of shit.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, he was dead on.
I'm with Jon. You can't spend a career embracing free trade policies and then complain when other countries produce goods and materials cheaper and take US jobs away. That's what free trade means. Also, the Cementos Lima plant was on the line for almost a year before Dent complained about it. Dent is ON the subcommittee dealing with cement production. Did he fall down on the job for the 12 months before his press release? It makes it hard to take his comments as sincere when he was in a position to do something about the plant but didn't, perhaps to save a hot issue for the campaign. Its weak all around.
ReplyDeleteStill sorry to hear of any job losses locally, but painting Dent as the sage seer in this story is way off.
Has Pooley's Dent Watch confirmed any of this?
ReplyDeleteJust sayin'
Didn't the Horny Hick from Hope sign NAFTA? I think he's a democrat.
ReplyDeleteDent was part of the 8 years of total Republican control of the Republic. What did they do during that period of time to strengthen basic U.S. industries?? Apparently not much. Their corporate sponsors like Haliburton and the Bechtel Corporation got their Weapons of Mass Destruction oops never mind war. Their wealthy supporters got 10 years of a tax break and like crack addicts can't imagine a world without being catered to by the drone like bought and paid for idiots like McConnell and Don't Cry for Me Boehner.
ReplyDeleteAnd to top things off, the Kool aid they have been selling the American public is pure bullshit.
On Meet the Press this week, David Gregory asked Sen. Mitch McConnell to defend the Bush tax cuts. "You've had these tax rates in place since 2001," he said. "What's been the impact on jobs?" "Imagine," McConnell responded, "how much worse it would have been if we'd had the higher tax rate." Is there a it created thousands of jobs that otherwise would not have been created somewhere in that answer? Never mind that McConnell has rejected that same argument—it could have been so much worse!—when Obama used it to defend the stimulus package. T
There's little evidence that the Bush tax cuts have had any significant effect on job growth over the last decade. Indeed, there's not a lot of evidence that tax cuts alone boost the economy much at all.
Advice to our youth - Learn how to be manservants to uber rich and a second language, Chinese will do.
Oh yes, and walk hand and hand with Palin to restore America to Utopian past where blacks can only say three-fifths of the word Constitution.
Iam suprised no one is blaming the Union for the lay off. We will never recover our economy as long as we don't invest in our own society and support our U.S. Workers. It is funny that we can't buy our meds from other countries and we are forced to pay over inflated prices for them and yet we can purchase cement from Peru instead of supporting the American and our economy. NY may be saving a few dollars at the expense of our citizen workers. We are running our Country into the ground by not taking cate of our Home the U.S.A. first.
ReplyDeleteCementos Limos made their mark in the US cement market back Feb 2007 when they invested in an AZ based company.
ReplyDeleteThe New York Port project was a $51M project that was stalled until April of 2010 when when New York City's economic development corporation approved $28 million in tax-exempt stimulus bonds for the project. This had bipartisian support. Dent wants you to think Obama flew into JFK and personally wrote the check. This project was lobbied for by NY Republican and Democratic officials. While I do not support this project and future affects on LV Cement manufactures, it is important to note that LV Cement production was at 50% with revolving layoffs before this project was announce.
I wished Dent would have lobbied for Federal funding to rebuild the most heavily travelled section of Route 22 which would have boosted construction jobs in the LV and possibly keep local Cement workers employed.
It is also important to note local cement companies modernized over recent years to produce greater volumes of product with less labor. I wonder if this was a contributing factor.
ReplyDeleteOne of our greatest asset here in PA is our natural resources. Seems odd that the parent company of our local cement giants are foreign owned.
My comment at 1049 may not be completly fair to Dent as it was appropriate for Dent to bring awareness to the port project. However wish he would have spoke out about it earlier when it was first considered and not wait 6months and use it politically.
ReplyDelete