Fed helps Harley, but firm cuts wages, workers, and sets up plant in India
The Federal Reserve purchase of $2.3 billion in Harley-Davidson bonds or stock is particularly galling, given that a) Harley just imposed a new three-tier wage structure for their Milwaukee workers and cut several hundred jobs despite their profitability and b) just announced the opening of a new low-wage plant in India. The announcement occurred during President Obama's tour of India billed as an effort to promote "US exports" to India.
In this case, that meant the export of US jobs. (Harley's extortion of wage cuts and the three-tier wage structure has been covered in depth on my workinginthesetimes.com site, and the posts are reprinted here on my Z website. In a new development, Harley contemptuously down $25 million in state incentives because the corporation refused to accept the job-creation provisions)
With the bank bailouts, there were no requirements of actual lending to stimulate the economy or limits on bonuses, and the unconditional GM and Chrysler bailouts produced a near-doubling of imports from GM and Chrysler plants in Mexico and China.
Once again with Harley, US taxpayer dollars benefited a corporation without any conditions about maintaining our US base of manufacturing jobs
More detail to follow as we learn more
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