Baldwin may have laid off some of their work force, but they're still in business. They'll be at NAMM next month. Paul McCloud San D eggo ----- Original Message ----- From: paul bruesch To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: 12/18/2008 8:13:05 PM Subject: Re: [pianotech] Baldwin Layoffs Exactly... What is the primary gripe about manufacturing going off to China and elsewhere? Is it the lost USAmerican jobs? Or is it the crap they ship back? The loss of USAmerican jobs is sad and bad enough, but what's worse is that USAmerican business thinks it's OK to save a few bucks on labor despite the poor quality we get for their savings. The biggest slap in the face is that the USAmerican consumer doesn't pay any less for the lower quality, generally. On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 9:09 PM, Byron <byronquam at shaw.ca> wrote: What do you mean, "We all want so much money.... "? This sounds like outdated Fox News talking points. Vise-Grips workers, Baldwin factory people and piano technicians should never be accused of wanting too much money! Nor should they be blamed (like autoworker union members) for a company shutting down. -----Original Message----- From: Paul T Williams [mailto:pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu] Sent: December-18-08 3:17 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Baldwin Layoffs Hi Will, I thought Baldwin already stopped their production in AR. It is a sad day. We, in Nebraska just lost Vise-Grips, Inc to Chinese manufaturing. That town only has a couple thousand people and Vise-Grip employed several hundred of them! ....so 25-30% of the work force??? We all want so much money.... A new ghost town in the making, I suppose... Paul "Will Truitt" <surfdog at metrocast.net> Sent by: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org 12/18/2008 05:04 PM Please respond to pianotech at ptg.org To<pianotech at ptg.org> cc Subject[pianotech] Baldwin Layoffs To the readers of the list: I received the e-mail newsletter from "Music Inc., For Progressive Music Retailers" today. Of interest to many of you will be: DEC. 16 I BALDWIN PIANO I PRODUCTION Baldwin Holiday Lay Offs Baldwin Piano will be ceasing production at its Trumann, Ark.-based plant, according to a Dec. 8 article in the Trumann Democrat. Baldwin notified Trumann chamber of commerce officials on Dec. 5 that it was permanently laying off 41 of its 55 employees. "It's sad for the community," said Sheila Walters, Trumann's mayor. "And I hate that it comes so close to Christmas. But I think it shows the filtering-down effect of the economic crisis in the country." The mayor added that she was saddened by the news because Baldwin was a good employer and a good corporate citizen. The announcement comes on the heels of recent figures released by the Labor Department, which showed that 533,000 Americans lost their jobs in November, the highest number in 34 years. Unemployment increased by 2.7 million, raising the national unemployment rate from 6.5 percent in October to 6.7 percent in November, a 15-year high. Baldwin had been building pianos in Trumann for more than 30 years and was acquired by Gibson in 2001. The company laid off 34 employees in February 2008 in a decision to manufacture solely Baldwin's custom line of pianos, which average in price around $60,000. MI It seems clear from the article that Baldwin will no longer be manufacturing pianos domestically. Whether they will continue some of the product manufacture overseas in China is not clear from the article. I know that not everyone holds a high opinion of Baldwin, but it is still a sad day. Will Truitt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20081218/bdc36062/attachment.html>
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