Kohler Strike

There's a strike going on at the Kohler plant in Searcy, AR. Searcy is a small town of 18,000 in rural Arkansas, about 60 miles north of Little Rock. In the last four years, two major employers have left town (Armstrong Flooring and Whitaker Furniture) and one is leaving at the end of the month (Maytag and its 600 jobs). All total, somewhere close to 1400 jobs have been lost in the last four years or so if I rmember correctly ( a big if).

So now the Kohler workers go on strike, and 231 people are standing on the side of the road instead of earning money. I give Kohler two weeks or so before they announce that they are relocating operations to some other place, probably China or Mexico. They had trouble with this same union back in the spring and gave up $1.3 million in concessions. That's not going to happen again. How can these people not realize that they are expendable? They are lucky to have decent paying jobs in this town. Kohler can train someone else to make a stainless steel sink for half the money somewhere else.

I understand that unions had their place back in the twentieth century. Not anymore.