On Tuesday, two major manufacturing companies reported massive layoffs.
Kolbe and Kolbe out of Wausau laid off 334 workers with hopes of bringing them back in the Spring. Kolbe & Kolbe Millwork Co., Inc. announced today that it is laying off 334 of its production and office employees — most of which work at the company’s Wausau facility —because of weak residential and light commercial construction industries...The layoffs are expected to be temporary; the company plans to call back many of the workers as possible in early spring, said Michael Salsieder, the company’s president, in a news release.
Salsieder could not anticipate how many workers would be called back, saying that it will be determined by the resiliency of the economy. http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20091110/WDH0101/91110107/1975&located=WISINFO
And: "Wick Building Systems said Tuesday it's closing plants and cutting hundreds of jobs.
Most of the job cuts will occur in Mazomanie, west of Madison, where the company has its headquarters.
Wick makes modular homes and pre-fabricated buildings and has been in business since 1960, according to the company's Web site.
A Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development news release said 352 of the job cuts will be in Mazomanie and 142 will be in Marshfield"
These are good paying jobs and it will devastate the Central Wisconsin and Northern Wisconsin economy.
Central and Northern Wisconsin has been hit very hard in losing manufacturing jobs. They have closed or reduced the number of employees at paper mills, closed other factories. Central Wisconsin's answer? Open a factory in Wisconsin Rapids that manufacture wings for wind mills. Nice, even if it even pans out, but it won't replace all the jobs that have been lost in the last couple of years.
I used to live and work in Central Wisconsin and I hope the area can work it out, but I have my doubts. Wisconsin Rapids is pinning it hopes on the "green plant'. But it just ain't going to work out. The green economy just isn't going to work, despite what Obama and other liberals hope for.
And now, hope and change is what many of these Central and Northern Wisconsn voters for when they re-elected Dave Obey and voted for Obama and hope and no jobs is what they are getting. And Dve obey's reaction:
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It's going to be hard on southern Wisconsin, too. Mazomanie is located just west of Madison (near Cross Plains and Black Earth). They've already lost a number of jobs at a local print shop in recent years. Wick was their other major employer.
ReplyDeleteWisconsin Rapids is not "pinning its hopes" on the green plant. We know better that to do that after what happened with the paper industry. There is a diversified approach being taken to building the local economy here, so it's not a one horse town again. Supporting local entrepreneurs, like the guy expanded Advanced Fiberglass from its little shop by Lincoln High School to the current plant in the East side industrial park is just one way. You watch, in three years the WR area will be a model for how local communities should be working together to create jobs and build a rural economy. What happened to the national economy last year, we've faced since 2000 when the paper industry started going belly up. We're years ahead in addressing this problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, WR Fan. I love Wisconsin Rapids, but I just don't see it. What were the headlines this past Spring and Summer? How this factory (sorry, I don't remember the name)who makes blades for wind mills. That factory just isn't going to hire the hundreds they want to hire, they may d a little bit business, but most of it is hype and hope. After all, who is going to buy the product? They got some nice tax write offs and incentives, but it unless something changes in the economy, it is going to fail.
ReplyDeleteRapids, still has tourism and a little bit of paper and farming, but that is about it.
I hope you are right and when I return in a year or so, I will be wrong.