Union, elected officials take company to task for moving jobs to Mexico.
Big crowd outside the statehouse in Indianapolis today. No, they weren’t there to hear Bob Knight ramble on about a Long-Haired teenager. They were there to pressure Carrier and United Technologies Electronic Controls – both subsidiaries of Connecticut-based United Technologies Corp. – for laying off 2,100 Hoosier workers and sending the jobs to Mexico, where the company will pay $3 per labor.
When the company announced its plans, its long-serving workforce was understandably shocked and upset. Since then, those workers and their union, the United Steelworkers, have been very public in their attempt to keep their manufacturing jobs in America.
Hence today’s rally, held days before Indiana’s primary vote, which these Hoosier workers staged right on the steps of the statehouse. They were joined by local labor leaders, state-level lawmakers, the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka, gubernatorial candidate John Gregg, and even presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and they covered a lot ground. Sanders, for instance, said that he’d push for more infrastructure spending as preisdent and guaranteed the “steel that goes into our infrastructure is American steel, not Chinese steel.
But all of the speakers called on United Technologies to reconsider moving these jobs to Mexico.
We’re with the workers in Indiana on this one. Those jobs should stay. But if they don’t, United Technologies should pay back every cent it’s received in tax incentives for locating its operations in the Hoosier States.