“Leave them alone and they’ll come home…”

Maytag Moves To Mexico
By David Moberg
Eight years ago, Kemp began working at the factory of Maytag Corporation, the largest employer in Galesburg, a western Illinois town of 34,000 and the birthplace of poet Carl Sandburg. In September, Maytag finally closed the plant, after sending a large part of the work that 1,600 people had recently been performing to a new Maytag factory in Reynosa, Mexico; another large part to Daewoo, a Korean multinational subcontractor that is expected to build a plant in Mexico; and a few dozen jobs to a plant in Iowa. Now Kemp, a 31-year-old union safety and education official with a muscular build and a small goatee, has a temporary job as a counselor to laid-off workers at two-thirds his old pay.
The local Machinists union fought the shutdown, taking their case to the streets, to the press, to politicians and to Maytag shareholders, even winning national attention when Senator-elect Barack Obama mentioned their cause in his Democratic convention keynote speech. But the union could not stop the Maytag jobs from being added to the tally of 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost since 2000. Those several million jobs were eliminated for many reasons—including declining demand, rising efficiency and increased imports—but a significant portion are the result of U.S. multinational corporations, like Maytag, moving production out of the country.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1790/maytag_moves_to_mexico/

I can only imagine the frustrations of some of the people who work within the vital organs of Maytag having to pack up to move to Mexico. I can only imagine some may have health insurance concerns for themselves or family members preventing them from quitting Maytag and try to get another job here in America. To many of them, I would imagine it is not the pay. Many of them could and would create a viable company here in America were they to stay. No, it would be their health insurance that would be the gun at the back of their heads making them sever their ties here, goose-stepping with their families and other co-workers down to Mexico.

I can imagine Americans working for American companies in “Those far away places with strange sounding names” wanting to come back home to America but are of such vital importance to their company it would be blasphemous and perhaps dangerous to openly opine, for they know the company would vaporize were they to leave. Public Option and “going back home” for them can only remain a dream, a fantasy they can only entertain in the privacy and security of their own minds. A real "Got'cha" moment. Sad.
As always,
BB