KS Senator Hensley returning Hallmark donation

[proud2BlibKansan]

TOPEKA, KAN. -- A state senator is returning a donation he received from Hallmark because of the greeting card company's decision to close its Topeka plant.

Sen. Anthony Hensley, a Democrat, says he'll return the $500 donation from Hallmark he received this week. Hallmark announced last week that it's consolidating operations in Topeka, Leavenworth and Lawrence. The move is expected to cut about 300 employees.

Hensley said his wife worked at the Topeka plant for 19 years as an assembly employee. He says he cannot accept a campaign contribution from a company that's leaving Topeka.

Casey Moore, Hensley's Republican opponent in the upcoming election, says Hensley is right to return the donation. But he says it would have been better Henlsey "had worked to keep jobs here."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/10/06/3851065/hensley-returning-hallmark-donation.html#storylink=cpy

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Hallmark cares enough to send the very best ... jobs to China

Everybody knew what the e-mail meant. It went out last fall to employees of the Production Art Division of Hallmark Cards. It said that manager Lee Burner had scheduled a mandatory meeting for the next day. Somebody from HR would be there.

Production artists were told to report to a conference room in the Rice Center, a section on the south side of Hallmark's Crown Center headquarters. The Rice Center is often the place for fun times at Hallmark, where the company hosts motivational speakers, including Ami James, a tattoo artist from Miami Ink. But the employees figured that some wouldn't return to their jobs at the end of the day.

Burner, who didn't return phone calls from The Pitch, is an upper-level manager with a reputation as a man willing to wield the ax. In early 2007, he warned the Production Art Division that some positions might be cut or that the department itself could disappear. "We will be a smaller company in the next two or three years," he predicted at a meeting last spring, according to an employee who was there.

The meeting in October was supposed to mark the end of Burner's reorganization of the division. He had already spent three months analyzing each position. But Hallmark employees often joke about how change happens slowly there — sometimes giving the example of how the Kwanzaa line took years to develop — and so far, nobody had been fired.

more . . . http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/hallmark-cares-enough-to-send-the-very-best-jobs-to-china/Content?oid=2190011