| Author | Message | ||
     Buellgrrrl |
About this time in 1987 Continental Baking closed the bakery I worked out of in Minneapolis. The building was being bought by the city for a convention center expansion. Our unions fought like hell to get the company to relocate in the Minneapolis area. But the company wouldn't listen, and like HOG(NYSE) probably will, they eventually went bankrupt. The city had set aside some economic development funds to help the company relocate, and after the company refused the offer we convinced the city to invest those unused funds in the 2nd dislocated worker program in american history. We had about 130 workers laid off at the bakery and we made sure workers for other business that lost their jobs due to the convention center expansion were eligible even though most weren't union members, so we started off with about 200 laid off workers. A few found other jobs or transfered to the companies other bakeries while we started up the program so we had about 160 workers go throught the program. IIRC, we got some additional funding from a state grant so we were able to offer the laid off workers some pretty comprehensive assistance- vocational counseling and testing, job search assistance, 6 months extra unemployment, continued health insurance, and up to a years vocational school or college tuition. We were able to find new jobs for almost every worker in the program. Our dislocated worker program became the model for such programs nationwide, and now they're pretty routine. Hopefully HOG(NYSE) will make contact with the Wisconsin Job Service and get a program started, but if not we may need to apply a little "pressure". So if you know any public officials around the East Troy area, please remind them of the layoffs at Buell and the need to get a dislocated worker program started so we can help the great folks who made our Buells find new jobs. | ||
| Court |
Buell employees report HD is going "above and beyond". | ||
| 2008xb12scg |
That's very good news Court! | ||
| Buellgrrrl |
Court, that's indeed good news. But given the current high unemployment in southeast Wisconsin these folks will probably need more help than HD is providing. |
