In his WaPo Op-Ed new Obama economic jobs and recovery leader, GE’s Jeffrey Immelt claimed we have returned many GE appliance manufacturing jobs to the States by collaborating with our unions and making our operations more efficient.”
This sounded hard to believe so with a little research here is what I found..
MAY 2008
Good-bye to GE Appliances
Posted by: Diane Brady on May 14, 2008
Ask many Americans what they associate with General Electric and they’ll give you two words: light bulbs and ovens. Ask investors what they would like to see GE dropkick from its family and you’ll often hear the same words.
Now a piece in The Wall Street Journal says GE is about to put its appliances business on the auction block. While GE won’t comment on the report, offloading the unit makes a lot of sense. It could bring up to $8 billion into GE’s coffers and get rid of a business that no longer fits GE’s mission. GE may decide to spin off the business or get into a partnership, too.
Pundits will likely attribute the timing of this move to GE’s startling earnings miss last quarter. On April 12, GE announced a 6% drop in first-quarter earnings, related to the credit crunch, and CEO Jeff Immelt cut the company’s profit outlook for the year. The stock plunged 13%, amid a spate of analyst downgrades. The stock price issue has dogged Immelt, who took over for Jack Welch in September 2001 with the stock trading around $40 a share; it’s now hovering above $32.
Immelt has to do something to show he’s steering the $173 billion company in a better direction. And the $7 billion appliances business has been a sore point with Immelt for some time.
2009:
A new lease on life for GE’s Appliance Park
GE Consumer & Industrial confirmed earlier media reports that it will manufacture energy efficient hybrid electric water heaters in Louisville, KY, at its Appliance Park manufacturing campus. The new production line will create about 400 jobs.
OCT 2010
Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) — General Electric Co. plans to spend $432 million and add 500 U.S. jobs to design and make energy- efficient refrigerators, returning positions to a division up for sale as recently as 2008.
Factories and design centers in Bloomington, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Decatur, Alabama; and Selmer, Tennessee, will open during the next four years, Fairfield, Connecticut- based GE said. Designs will incorporate Energy Star standards in effect in 2014 and target the U.S.
GE has invested more than $1 billion in its appliance unit, creating more than 1,300 jobs since 2009. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt said in a September speech that he planned to bring appliance jobs back from China and Mexico, because U.S. workers were making higher-quality products for less. Employees and unions agreed to cut expenses, including reducing starting wages for production employees.
“This is a big commitment on the part of GE to transform the business and put us in a much different place,” Jim Campbell, head of the appliances and lighting division, said today in an interview with reporters.
The company decided to invest at a time when the industry is suffering so that GE will be ready with new products when business picks up, Campbell said. The industry expects to sell about 38 million units in the U.S. this year, down from about 50 million in 2006 during the housing boom, he said.
Dec 2010
After Cutting Losses, GE Refocuses On Manufacturing
The New York Times published a profile of Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s CEO, last Sunday titled “G.E. Goes With What It Knows: Making Stuff,” lauding his singular efforts to bring the company back from focusing on its financial divisions, instead putting the emphasis on – gasp! – actually making and building things.
Yep, you know that when one of the “bluest of blue-chip” companies has to get out the media megaphone to announce its “come to Jesus” moment – realizing that manufacturing, the cornerstone of the past that the company was built on is now the wave of the future – something is changing in the air.
Indeed, Steve Lohr, the Times’ veteran business reporter, invokes the term (as well as the feeling of) “change” in the profile almost as many times as there are numbers of GE products – “drive change,” “drive growth and change,” “efforts to push large-scale change” – but, alas, as the saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The issue here isn’t change at all. A return to manufacturing simply seems imminent, so going back to an old classic shouldn’t feel any different at all.
But, after a decade or more of so many companies getting on the financial services bandwagon, it seemed natural for builders and makers like those at GE to get caught up in the financial world.
“The big buildup of GE Capital occurred during the tenure of Mr. Immelt’s famous predecessor, Jack Welch,” Lohr writes. “But while Mr. Immelt, who took over in 2001, spun off the unit’s insurance business, he also bulked up on commercial real estate and other loans. In 2004, G.E. even bought a subprime lender in California, WMC Mortgage, which it shed in 2007 for a $1 billion loss.”
We’ve long known that many companies in the metals sphere realize building things is the key to future economic stability – look no further than Nucor, whose progressive and extremely effective corporate culture needs no significant overhaul.
9 comments:
From the NYT quote: ". . .lauding his singular efforts to bring the company back from focusing on its financial divisions, instead putting the emphasis on – gasp! – actually making and building things."
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". . .we want an economy that is fueled by what we invent and what we build." -Obama on 1/21/2011
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GE's Immelt to Succeed Volcker as Obama Economic Adviser
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Obama hasn't had an original thought in his entire tedious life, and so he picks another loser to guide his economic recovery. Buckle up, two more years to this bumpy ride.
GE appliances aren't called Generally Expensive for satire. They have the life span of a twinkie.
As for Immelt crony capitalist, who's proof that in businesses dependent on government largesse and politics to succeed it isn't what you know but who you bl*w.
The Regime-Immelt Deal Smells
". . . General Electric and Obama are in bed with each other. General Electric got gobs of TARP money. " . . ."General Electric has been in bed with Obama on this green energy garbage. MSNBC, the NBC networks, "go green" many weeks a year with their graphics and all this other stuff -- and they've used government money to create this green energy division that they have, and they're behind these compact fluorescent lightbulbs. They run NBC and MSNBC at a steep loss in order to give Obama his own cheerleading news network, and this CEO ends up on an advisory board now."
As with anything Rush . . .go read it all.
from Rush's link above:
OBAMA: We're going back to Thomas Edison's principles. We're gonna build stuff and invent stuff. Now, nobody understands this better than Jeff Immelt. He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.
RUSH: Jeff Immelt doesn't have to compete. Jeff Immelt has the power of the US government. The US government saw to it that GE would be reclassified as a bank so it could get TARP bailout money while it was showing a profit. Jeff Immelt does not have to compete. But that's not the main point of the sound bite. I wonder how many of you caught this. Play this again. Snerdley, anybody in there, this is huge. This is the biggest laugher of the day. Play this sound bite again.
OBAMA: We're going back to Thomas Edison's principles. We're gonna build stuff and invent stuff.
RUSH: Stop the tape. We're going back to Thomas Edison's principles. We are banning Edison's lightbulb! We are erasing Edison. This is comical. We're going back to Thomas Edison principles, and at the same time we're gonna get rid of that hacker lightbulb. Thomas Edison is an enemy of the environment, folks, by definition. These guys are banning his lightbulbs. Those lightbulbs have contributed to dead polar bears, drowning sea lions, skyrocketing temperatures around the world, record snowfall, whatever has gone out of whack, those lightbulbs are a leading contributor to our planet's demise. And here is our grim leader, "We're gonna go back to Edison's principles," while we're getting rid of Edison. Lord help us. And this is what passes for unparalleled, unprecedented, never-before-seen intelligence and rhetoric, and the ability to articulate among the ranking members of the ruling class.
"And coincidentally, on the same day GE announces a joint venture partnership of its jet engine division with China's Avix ... for those who do not know: any company doing business in China must hand over all its proprietary stuff - like Microsoft had to hand over its Windows source code.
GE will now be doing the same with its jet engine tech. China's efforts to build fighter aircraft (comparable to western fighters) has been held back by its inability to build comparable jet engines - relying on Russian imports and homemade knockoffs.
The much discussed J20 Chinese stealth fighter will now be able to field engines comparable to the best the US has in use: the F-22, F-35, and others fighters.
This deal is like Loral allowing the Chinese to ‘find’ the guidance system in a rocket launched and crashed in China under Clinton. Thus giving the Chinese accurate ICBM guidance and the ability to target US cities.
The recent visit by Hu was merely the formalizing this huge tech transfer. And the appointment of this Obama-worshiping character is nothing more than the payoff."link, see PIF
“We will invent stuff and build stuff ”
um hmmm . . .stuff, eh? Interestin choice of words there. Don't expect much invent'n or build'n if it has anything to do with The story of 'stuff'.
Anonymous- GET OFF IT, no one has been MORE vocal about Obama than me, but what is OBJECTIVELY POSITIVE for the USA and it's workers IS.
Partisan opposition for NO OTHER REASON is a NEGATIVE and COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
If GE products suck (and recently Consumer reports has panned some of them .. ALL MADE OVERSEAS) they will suffer the usual fate as determined by the market, NOT RUSH LIMBAUGH FOR POLITICAL REASONS.
GE has decided to move ALL it's appliance production back to the USA.
US EMPLOYMENT IN APPLIANCE MANUFACTURING SINCE 1990
GROW UP
GIVE ME A BREAK!
EPA - I have dumped every single GE appliance in my ten year old house - two on multiple occassions since GE attempted to fix/replace defective units. Every neighbor in this 256 house community is doing the same. GE appliances don't last, don't work as promised and aren't worth a single penney.
IF and when GE mfg. comes back to the US they will have to deal with union labor and prove themselves all over again in the competitive marketplace.
This appliance manufacturer would be better off to totally reinvent itself as "American made" and completely distance itself from Immelt/GE's prior destructive policies and identity. GE's reputation in the appliance industry is mud.
G.E. is short for Government Electric. Immelt is a complete liberal, leftie HACK.
As usual Rush has got it just about 100% pegged correctly again.
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