“International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union President Jim Hoffa told Candy Crowley on ‘State of the Union’ that President Obama should attack American companies in his upcoming speech for being “unpatriotic” by investing on other countries,” Joel Gehrke reports for The Washington Examiner.
“Hoffa admitted that it is cheaper for companies to invest in other countries – ‘we know that,’ he said – but maintained that companies ‘have an obligation to America to build [factories] in America,'” Gehrke reports. “Hoffa then called on Obama to attack companies who invest overseas in his upcoming jobs speech.”
“Hoffa continued by calling Apple ‘unpatriotic’ for considering construction of a factory in Mexico,” Gehrke reports. “He argued that labor costs are not too high for companies to succeed in the United States.”
“Hoffa also suggested a tax incentive to get companies ‘off the sidelines, get into the game and start spending some of that money here in America and put America back to work,” Gehrke reports. “The problem with the union pushing the President to dangle a carrot to companies is that they also have Obama carrying a huge stick in the form of his National Labor Relations Board, which has sued Boeing to close a non-union factory that the airplane manufacturer built in the right-to-work state of South Carolina.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Everyone calm down. It’s obvious that Obama can’t have a Jobs report without bringing up Apple.
Not sure what i think of Hoffa but when the company I work for is pushing pay cuts and benefit losses while the executives pay is increasing i sure as hell have to believe we need unions now more than ever.
When I was planing of manufacturing a pair of customized pants I priced the cost here and overseas. My goal was to wholesale them for $40. US manufacturing cost was $45 which was above what I was going to sell them for and China was $12 delivered. I could not possible afford to have them made here.
With Apple low, overseas manufacture cost, they have created thousands of jobs here.
Not to mention the availability of their products for purchase by the masses. Think about the alternative union scenario. Only “Rich” people would be able to afford their products and the entire computer-cell phone market would be tiny. Not mention lack of access to the web. You liberals are brain dead.
Facts:
– Nov. 2008: 95% of black voters voted for Obama
– Sept. 2011: Black unemployment highest in 27 years
There’s a very powerful political ad to be made based on those two facts.
End it with a third fact: The man who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln, was a proud Republican.
I urge my black brothers and sisters in the U.S. to wake up and stop voting yourselves into slavery every year. The government and dependence on it for subsistence living is destroying your culture.
The Republican Party of Abe Lincoln’s day and the modern Republican Party aren’t even close to the same entity. This goes for the Democrats as well.
Your third act would be disingenuous to put it incredibly nicely.
It’s like saying people should bet on Uruguay to win the World Cup because their national team was a soccer powerhouse in 1930.
Why do PoliTards have to fill their stomachs full with hateful bile then come here and VOMIT?
Just STFU and go play with the other PoliTards in the sandbox. We talk about computers here, not propaganda pandering. 😛
Because that’s what this MDN post is about dumb ass, politics.
And Al Gore Sr., George Wallace, Ernest Hawlings, William Fulbright, Robert Byrd, and many other supporters of apartheid in the South were prominent Democrats. Now, the Democrat Party actually runs the new plantations that keep blacks in chains – the cities of Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago, Columbus, LA, and many more, where Democrat policies have been in place for decades and there is only despair. No jobs, no education, lots of crime and drugs and tolerance of every behavior that destroys an effective society.
This di$%bag, his buddy Trumka, and their enabler in the White House are a big part of the problem. It’s time we passed a national right to work law and prohibited public employees from collective bargaining. That may not be the entire solution, but it is a LARGE part of it. I used to be a Democrat. Then, I opened my eyes.
It seems rather obvious but Steve is building a huge factory in the US .The Mothership in Cupertino which will house 12,000 Apple workers .And here’s the neat part -they are going to build really great intellectual stuff that only be built in a society that places great importance on higher education and freedom of thought
Apple has to build factories in other/cheeper countries as long as their competitors are also doing so.
The only way to change this is for the government to force all competitors to do the same thing. If you are not willing to do that, then there is no point in even talking about this.
Then there are companies like Samsung that you can’t force to do anything like this.
Well maybe if Obama lowered the obscenely high corporate tax rate maybe Apple and other companies would come back. We have the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world. It’s like our politicians want businesses to leave this country. As for Hoffa – I hope he keeps talking his radical union mentality talk. For as long as it takes.
We mexicans are number one worldwide at enssambling and exporting cellphones. In fact, we’ve enssambled the most RIM Blackberries existing in the world (don’t blame on us for the crappy design, we just follow orders).
Personally, I’d be so proud for my country to manufacture the iPad or the MacBook air or the iPhone. “Made in Mexico. Designed in California.” It sounds great!!
Did not one Mr. Steven Jobs lobby the Pres to provide some kind of incentive so companies can bring their multi billions back into the US without losing a ridiculous sum to the spending addicts in Washington?
I’ve lived 30+ miles north of the cesspool known as Detroit and have had to listen to union crap my entire life. Alright, I paid no attention at all in the 80’s, but I’m making up for lost time. Nothing ever changes. Nothing. It’s the same BS over and over, year after year, contract after contract.
What the saying….insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Sit the F***m down Jr.
So not being union is unpatriotic now? Damn, I guess that makes a lot of the workforce unpatriotic. What about all the unemployed? Maybe they’re unpatriotic. Hard to form a labor union if there’s no labor to be had. Thanks for the new perspective Mr. Hoffa!
The cognitive dissonance with conservatives is mind blowing. Do they not even see the hypocrisy in their arguments. Oh wait, of course they don’t they’re myopic conservatives. Their arguments aren’t thought out, just based on how they FEEL at any particular moment.
Conservative: “Hey Obama, where’s the jobs you promised, America needs jobs…your a failure for not getting jobs back in America!
A week later, “What! someone suggested that Obama call out companies to bring jobs back to America! What a socialist!!! The government needs to stay out of corporate affairs!!! The corporations should be able to do whatever they want, even if it means shipping jobs overseas!!!
This is almost along the lines of… “Pro life! Pro life!! Abortion should be outlawed, Every child should be protected!!”, then, once the kid is born, “No health care, food stamps, medicaid, or free school for you… Why is your welfare my problem?!?! You’re on your own!
Wow are you clueless. Go crawl back under your rock you commie.
More thuggery by duh unionsssss. I’ll probably be attacked with a pipe wrench for saying this, but Hoffa and others like him fail to consider that a considerable percentage of Apple’s jobs are in the US. Apple makes more than physical products. Thousands of good paying American jobs are created by Appke in software, retail, customer support, design and engineering and more. add to that thousands of other jobs created indirectly by Apple with third party software and product developers as part of the greater Apple ecosystem. That is considerable.
What Hoffa wants is for emplOyees of Apple to by owned by union thugs, and drive the company into the toilet. My hope is that Hoffa and thugs like him are hit with the RICO laws and put behind bars where they belong.
Unions once served a noble purpose. Today, they are little more than organized crime. It’s time they went the way of the buggy whip, before they destroy what remains of a once great American manufacturing industry.
Reading the right wing comments here make me wonder what’s wrong with your?
Bush started two (2) wars on credit! And top of that he lowered taxes! For the very rich! Don’t you understand how basic economics work?
Hey Scandinvian idiot, go straight to hell. You have no clue what you’re talking about. Maobama has spent more that on all US presidents combined before his first year in office was finished. It’s liberals and communist wannabes that are screwing the world up. Bush wasn’t perfect but he was light years better than this illegal alien president with a phony social security card.
Reading the left wing comments here make me wonder what’s wrong with your?
Obama and unions are destroying the US as fast as they can.
If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear, ever so faintly, a mysterious death coming. Yeah…..you hear that….yeah…crazy huh…i Know!!
Well, apparently the current corrupt version of the free enterprise system is ‘unpatriotic’. It’s certainly not nice to US workers! That’s because the consistent pressure on the current lamebrain biznizz culture is THE BOTTOM LINE. IOW, US employees, despite being the single most productive working on the planet, COST TOO MUCH.
Look at history: What do rich people typically want? What did the LORDS of the feudal dark ages want? FREE LABOR. But darn, you have to pay workers something or they starve and die, and that costs money! So feed them but otherwise screw them over while they make your stuff for you. That is what the current work culture in China is all about. That’s why I’ve been shouting at Apple to GET THE HELL OUT OF CHINA for years.
Can you blame Apple for succumbing to price pressure by being part of the ‘slave wage labor’ movement? You decide.
But pulling the worn out, nearly illegible and in this case meaningless ‘unpatriotic’ card is entirely LAUGHABLE. 😆
Please try harder Mr. Hoffa.
(Funny how that name is so familiar.
Union royal succession perhaps?) 😉
No lame brain, it’s the consumers. They wouldn’t buy Apple products or any products at the insane union inflated prices that US made product would cost. US worker can be great. They demand too much to get it done though. It’s not necessarily the business’ fault. Taxing corporations is idiotic too because it’s the consumers that pay those taxes in cost of the product. Unions need to end, government needs to de-unionize and massively shrink, then and only then will the US economy take off.
It’s BECAUSE of Hoffa and his unions that manufacturing is all going overseas. Most trades cost the employer around $50-80/hour (including benefits) and are fairly inefficient. Compare that to $10/hr in China. Give me a break. Crying in your beer. The jobs are not coming back, and the more you obstruct and whine, the more jobs will leave. Read up about Longview, Washington union actions this week. A real eye opener. Longshoremen are the worst.
PS I have been a union electrician for 20+ years. But only because I want to be overpaid too. When we have work, it’s great. But the more money we get, the less jobs there will be. How is this helpful to the country?
Since you appear to be the arbiter of reasonable compensation, how much should manufacturing jobs cost per hour, including all benefits and taxes?
But wait…you fail to even consider the impact of quality and productivity. If American workers can be more productive and produce higher quality goods, then higher compensation might be warranted. It is overly simplistic to look at overall compensation, make such a judgment, and then declare that the entire source of the problem is unions.
All this aside, unions do not have to be evil or counterproductive. Unions were formed because companies were evil. The pendulum swings back and forth over the decades, and I agree that some unions have gradually accumulated too much power and enacted stifling labor rules. So let’s fix that and move on.
If you have truly been a union electrician for over 20 years, then I have to ask what efforts you made to fix union excesses. How were you helpful to your country?
Surprising absence of facts in Hoffas statement and this thread.
Apple has NO overseas manufacturing plants. It is the FAILURE of the American free enterprise system to establish contract electronics manufacturing facilities in the US that keeps those jobs in China.
But the US made content of Apple products is higher than one thinks on first glance, since many of the component devices are U made and China does mostly final assembly of parts from a world-wide variety of sources.
You’d think a bunch of Apple fans would know such things.
OH DEAR! Jobs UNSURPRISINGLY to NON crApple Fagbois (ie IQs into double figures) DIED TODAY!!!!
Right now the internet’s quaking with speculation about Steve Jobs’ possible death—all sparked by a single tweet. But rumors from news desks and people dumping AAPL stock are making us wonder: is this it?
It’s reminding us a lot of the media rumors that swirled up right before Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer. It’s extremely hard to keep the lid on the death of a celebrity—today more than ever, thanks to websites like ours.
OH DEAR! Jobs UNSURPRISINGLY to NON crApple Fagbois (ie IQs into double figures) DIED TODAY!!!!
Right now the internet’s quaking with speculation about Steve Jobs’ possible death—all sparked by a single tweet. But rumors from news desks and people dumping AAPL stock are making us wonder: is this it?
It’s reminding us a lot of the media rumors that swirled up right before Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer. It’s extremely hard to keep the lid on the death of a celebrity—today more than ever, thanks to websites like ours.
Hmmm. Looks like my post was deleted. I can’t imagine why, it was tamer than most of the political drivel that’s still present.
In summary, just imagine the opposite of whatever F10T12 says, the paranoid, self-farrighteous freak.