Word: caterpillar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...managers be the managers, but the managers couldn't manage," said Gary Garner, who is on strike against Caterpillar Tractors in Decatur, Ill. "The strike is destroying Decatur, Illinois. They're closing business; they're closing schools; people indirectly are losing their jobs...
...largest U.S. operations affected were Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Eli Lilly and Caterpillar. Procter & Gamble, which runs a $2 billion business in Japan, will be unable to use its 30-story office tower for several months, and is operating out of nearby Osaka. Lilly's main plant is still working but a new one, due to open this month, will need weeks of repair. Hewlett-Packard's electronics plant went back to work at 60% capacity last week. ``Shoot,'' says Dorwin Larsen, general manager of the Shin Caterpillar Mitsubishi joint venture in Kobe, ``it's not that significant...
...Caterpillar took a more conventional, and controversial, lean-and-mean approach. In the early 1980s, says Glen Barton, group president for construction and mining machinery, Caterpillar's "costs were out of line with what overseas markets were willing to pay for our products"; the company lost $1.5 billion cutting prices below cost to meet the competition of Japan's Komatsu and other rivals. But Caterpillar has slashed its work force 31% in the past dozen years, and that has lowered costs and raised productivity: from sales of $886,000 per employee to $2.3 million. Losses have turned to profits...
...Caterpillar, which has been embroiled in a United Auto Workers strike since June, will hire 1,000 workers in China in the next few years to build engines and excavators there. That infuriates Jerry Brown, who heads the U.A.W. local in East Peoria, Illinois. Says he: "They're selling the quality and technology that we helped build over the years. We're being forced to suffer from our own success...
...Caterpillar vice president Siegfried Ramseyer argues that American workers will come out ahead in the end: by launching joint ventures in China, the company will create a larger market for, say, Caterpillar's 240-ton truck, which is currently made in Decatur, Illinois. This, he says, is a long- standing strategy. "Wherever in the world we went to manufacture, we exported more from America...