[gMUVgw71]

It was funny at first.

The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Gaping up at the cranes that swung 10-foot cast iron buckets through the air. Jumping at the thunder from the melt shop's electric-arc furnace as it turned scrap metal into lava.
"They looked like a bunch of high school kids to me. A bunch of Wall Street preppies," says Jim Linson, an electronics repairman who worked at the plant for 40 years. "They came in, they were in awe."

Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.
It was a gamble. The old mill, renamed GS Technologies, needed expensive updating, and demand for its products was susceptible to cycles in the mining industry and commodities markets.
Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 (258 pounds) a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.


Long read...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1189227.html

[nerkvcbtre]

With supporters like McCain, who needs enemies? LOL
Isn't there a home for people suffering form this?

[Chooriwrocaxz]

I could really give a shit less about mittys religion or his ancestory but doesn't he have a little bit of conflict of interest in that he has family there?

Second thing...the young dude in the tube was talking about the drug war and that the answer wasn't more guns and coptors, he was talking legalization! And that he was going to come vote (dual citizenship) in the prez race. My question is, who ya wanna bet he votes for? LMAO...bet it's Ron Paul!

[orison]

this section struck me...

Paperwork proliferated. Cost-cutting efforts backfired. Managers skimped on purchases of everything from earplugs to spare motors and scaled back routine maintenance. Machines began to break down more often, and with parts no longer in stock a replacement could take days to arrive.

Labor costs spiked as managers revamped work schedules with little understanding of how the plant actually operated. Linson says he picked up an entire shift of overtime each week because his managers didn't realize that a furnace needed a full eight hours to heat up to operating temperature.

"That didn't work to their advantage," he said. "I made a lot of money."

Daily life at the plant was also growing more dangerous. Veteran crane operator Ed Mossman says he was ordered to pick up a load of steel that was 50 percent above the recommended weight limit - a prospect that could have toppled the crane and sent Mossman plunging to his death. When he refused, he says, he was fired after putting in 29 years at the mill.

[hjyAMqqT]

Veteran crane operator Ed Mossman says he was ordered to pick up a load of steel that was 50 percent above the recommended weight limit Welcome to the new American management style. Last project I was on the contractor lost a foreman in an accident that was avoidable. Federal OSHA sent in two officers to investigate and the second week there one of them slipped on a platform and injured herself.