This one really hits home. Not only is it in my state but it also affects the field I use to be in:

Whirlpool Corp. said Wednesday that it will eliminate 4,500 jobs by closing three plants and consolidating corporate offices and other sites following its acquisition of rival appliance maker Maytag Corp.

The moves come in the wake of Whirlpool’s $1.8 billion acquisition of Maytag on March 31, extending its lead as the nation’s biggest appliance maker.

Whirlpool plans to close Maytag washer and dryer plants in Newton, Iowa; Herrin, Ill.; and Searcy, Ark. Laundry manufacturing sites in Clyde, Ohio, and Marion, Ohio, will absorb the production, Whirlpool spokesman Daniel Verakis said.

Also slated to close are Maytag’s corporate headquarters and research center in Newton, Iowa, as well as administrative offices in Schaumburg, Ill., Canada and Mexico.

I started out in the appliance repair field in 1994. Back then it was a vibrant industry and provided a decent living. Within 7 years the field totally imploded to being almost none existent.

The problem is that we live in a disposable society. Instead of repairing appliance, it is easier, and a lot of the time cheaper for people to go out an buy new.

The manufacturers of appliances also dealt a serious blow to the industry by increasing the price of replacement parts dramatically while decreasing the price of new appliances. This caused the appliance repair field to also dwindle down to nothing. A couple years ago I went to my old parts house to get a new ice maker for my refrigerator. It was my first time there in about three years. When I use to go there, they had approximatley 30 people working for them. That work force had been reduced to eight and still shrinking.

This is all signs of a larger scale problem. For the past couple decades we have seen manufacturing jobs move out of country and close up. This is leaving us with this new “service society” where adults are forced to take jobs they would have held as high school students (fast food, retail, hotels, etc.) We also have opportunities to make our economy better but the Republican leadership of this country won’t take action to do so. One simple way would be a bigger investment in alternative fuel research which will also lead to alternative fuel manufacturing. Of course they only talk about that when gas prices are high and all they do is talk then.

For the northern part of my state, this news is a deadly blow. They have already been a major victim to outsourcing and this will destroy the economies up there. We are going through that here in southern Ohio also with the closing of the Ford plant in Batavia and an uncertain future for the Sharonville Ford plant.

If America continues on this current path then it will be a matter of years, not decades, before we are a majority lower class nation.