Town May Seize Factory to Prevent Dismantling by Vengeful Owner

[Hannah Bell]

This story illustrates how far some companies are willing to go to preserve their bottom lines and assert their right to operate in an unfettered manner, even when that includes breaking the law and violating contracts.

Esterline is in the process of shuttering its Tauton manufacturing operation, Haskon Aerospace, which specialized silicone-rubber seals and gaskets for military planes and the airline industry. Even though the plant has always been profitable, Esterline is moving production to non-union operations in Mexico and California.

Here’s where it gets ugly. Esterline had given the union, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union, the right of first refusal to buy the facility and operate it itself. But the company decided to renege on the deal when the union had to insist that the company obey Massachusetts law and pay for three months of medical care after employees were let go. Esterline started dealing in bad faith, and said it would cut the already-agreed-upon severance package by $143,000. That’s not kosher; it’s called “regressive bargaining” and the unions have filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board.

Esterline has now turned punitive. Its latest position is that it needs to compensate for these additional severance costs (since when is complying with the law an add on?) and has scheduled an auction for the plant’s equipment. The union went to the Tauton town council and have secured a preliminary commitment for it to use its eminent domain powers under the Fifth Amendment, which permits governments to take control of private property for public purpose (the council is waiting for the results of a legal analysis before it takes a formal vote). Huffington Post reported that the town solicitor presented his preliminary findings, and the council voted unanimously to call on Esterline to postpone the auction while he completes his research.

Esterline posted nearly $120 million in profits and paid its CEO in excess of $6 million last year. This scorched-earth battle is over an operation that employs 100 people.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/11/town-may-seize-factory-to-prevent-dismantling-by-vengeful-owner.html

The union taking this action is the same union that won the Republic Doors & Windows action.

http://www.ueunion.org/index.html

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6686/masters_of_eminent_domain_union_struggling_mass._town_take_on_aerospac/

[Sherman A1]

1. Should make an interesting court case

I am in hopes the Union prevails.

[melm00se]

2. i don't think that this

will survive a court challenge.

traditionally, eminent domain is used for real property/land. Private, portable equipment would not fall under that category nor should it.

lets say it's successful, now extend this action a bit (and that's what happens when a precedent is set): what happens when a government decides that it needs your car (or TV or washer/dryer) for the public good? offers up "fair" compensation (which is rarely fair or even close to the fair market value) and you don't have the financial wherewithal to mount a court challenge? (yes, I know it's hyperbole)

you lose your car (or whatever) and the amount paid to you is insufficient to replace what was expropriated.

I doubt that you would sit back and cheer the locality on.

if the city wants to eminent domain the property and offer "fair compensation" that is their right to attempt. The contents of the building, OTOH, should not be within the scope of eminent domain.

can the city bid on the sale of the equipment? most certainly but they should be paying FMV not what the gov't decides is the FMV.

[fasttense]

4. But it's ok to use eminent domain laws to confiscate property

from the poor so that Real Estate developers can create another playground for the rich?

It seems to me that concern for precedent went out the window when the Dancing Supremes violated the Constitution and selected our president for us. And precedent didn't seem to be a concern when the dancing supremes made corporations people too.

Then there is the little matter of torture that dick and bush approved in violation of national and international law. Yet they never were prosecuted. Does that establish precedent too?

We no longer have any rule of law. We are merely a nation controlled by the whims of CEOs.

[melm00se]

9. LET IT GO

I am tired of hearing, every single time a court may rule against your personal agenda, the whining that because the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush that everything that they have done, are doing or might do in the future is crap.

you know what you sound like? the folks who scream "ACTIVIST JUDGES!!"

the standing precedent, through out American history, is that eminent domain applies to real property not "personal" property. Open that door, even a crack and a chunk of the 5th amendment goes out the window.

You should feel real proud calling for that to fit an agenda that in 10, 15, 20 or more years down the road will be a footnote in a history treatise.

Don't believe me? try this series on for size:

San Francisco, twice once in 1893 and then again in 1906, implemented Chinese (actually oriental) only schools in effort to make San Francisco as uncomfortable a place to live. (source: Ng, Wendy. Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002, p. xvii)

in 1908 the US entered into a Gentleman's Agreement with Japan to severely limit the immigration of Japanese males until 1924 when that informal agreement became formal with the Immigration Act of 1924. (although there were what were termed "picture brides" who were allowed to immigrate - women had their pictures taken with Japanese males, usually brothers or cousins to "prove' they were married - playing to the stereotype that one oriental looks like any other oriental). (source: Ng, Wendy. Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002, pp. 4-5)

Later in 1910, the US Navy Department ceded control and ownership of a decommissioned but still armed warship, rechristened the Cheyenne, into private hands to combat the growing fears of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast (source: Neiwert, David A. Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 22).

Popular culture didn't help much and this peaked during WWII with a series of songs by George Formby about the "Famous Mr. Wu" which played to stereotype after stereotype of orientals (window cleaners, laundry shop owners and plain incompetents outside of those "acceptable" forms of employment) (Source: Formby, George. Mr. Wu's an Air Raid Warden Now. The Very Best of George Formby. Master Classics Records, 2009. CD.

So what you ask? what does that have to do with the OP or this thread?

All but the last were actions fully supported by the government to address a growing and thriving anti-oriental immigration agenda that are, to the vast majority of people, including many here, completely unknown events...most of which occurred smack dab in the middle of what has been coined "the Progressive era" of American history.

your agenda will, if historical patterns hold true, fall to the wayside for some other agenda but the decisions (mostly the bad ones) will have repercussions down the line. All of the above grew to the point where most americans and their government cheered on one of FDR's absolute worst decision: the internment of Japanese Americans (many of whom had never stepped foot outside the USA) during WWII.

Do you want to go down as someone who supported the erosion of the 5th amendment?

[rog]

11. You really need to watch this documentary.

It's the first thing I thought of when I read about this case.

.rog.

The Take, by Naomi Klein

http://www.thetake.org

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave.

All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - The Take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.

<snip>

The story of the workers' struggle is set against the dramatic backdrop of a crucial presidential election in Argentina, in which the architect of the economic collapse, Carlos Menem, is the front-runner. His cronies, the former owners, are circling: if he wins, they'll take back the companies that the movement has worked so hard to revive.

Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.

[melm00se]

14. it's interesting to see

folks cheer for one person's rights when it tramples someone else's rights. yet boo when the shoe is on the other foot.

the world is full of these kinds of conflicts and if emotion and subjective rules are the measurement and deciding factor, then there really is no justice.

[rog]

16. So, did you watch The Take, then?

Are you even familiar with this story, or the issue in general.

All of your 'arguments' are addressed in the film, articulated by the CEOs of the companies in question. The workers won, and there is a followup book in print now, documenting the current situation.

And re: "emotion as a deciding factor," it's my observation that your posts are as knee-jerk reactionary as any.

Just watch the film, OK? Then we can talk about it.

.rog.

[Odin2005]

21. The the "emotion is a factor" BS comes out you know you are talking to a Libertarian nitwit.

They pull that BS all the time, exclaim that RW economics is "rational" while economic justice is based on "emotion". It exposes a sociopathic personality.

[Odin2005]

22. And so as far as I'm concerned there is nothing wrong with confisicating their "property"

The elites tore up the rule of law so they have no fucking right to whine if some activists take over their factories!

[seabeckind]

5. I think we're well past time to revamp eminent domain

I believe it should apply to intellectual property as well.

Example, a company developes a cure for diabetes. One shot into the pancreas(sp?) and fixed for life.

Lilly buys the company and buries the patent so they can keep selling their insulin.

Isn't something similar what killed the EV from GM?

Course in this case as well as the factory above, we are skirting pretty close to the dreaded soshulisms.

[melm00se]

10. until, of course,

it's YOUR intellectual property.

I am willing to bet that your tune will change in awfully big hurry.

[seabeckind]

12. Please reread the example

And then rephrase your comment.

In the example the entity that developed the property has already sold it.

I didn't say the state was going to come in and steal your property. My tune would stay the same.

[melm00se]

13. it's your property

regardless if you developed it or purchased it, you may do with as you please, hence the term "private property".

additionally, many patents get sold because the inventor/developer does not have the capital or mechanisms to progress from the idea stage to a fully functional and marketable product. Your proposal would have multiple impacts:

1) many patents would then languish in the land of great ideas but no execution (and how does that differ from your Lilly example above? - I'll get to that in a second)

2) this would freeze any acquisition of patents by people who might have the ability to bring a product to market as they might find, after further development that the technology to bring it to market in a cost effective manner is just not there. So, along comes the government, who, it is infinite wisdom and power, decides that the owner is full of shit and seizes the patent.

back to the secondary issue of point #1: how long do you think it will take for someone, like you, with great and good intentions do decide that, you know, eminent domain needs to be reworked to cover situations like the one described in #1 and, lo and behold, it is...exactly why would ANYONE take the risk to develop and patent any idea or product if the government can just up and decide to foreclose on it using it's power of eminent domain.

Naivete prevents folks from looking past the immediate impact to the secondary and tertiary impacts of an action and it applies doubly so when folks start thinking "oh, that'll never happen". It can, it does and it will.

[zenprole]

18. Randroid Alert!

It's convenient that your protests about eminent domain fall into line with the corporate agenda. Paranoid speculation about the aggressive use of state power to aid common people is a joke; we should be so lucky.

But that isn't it. Partially concealed behind your lawyerly battalion of straw men is a hatred of democracy, the notion that wealth shouldn't be the sole determinant in politics or economics.

Your views here are social pathology, but that's fair enough because the bad news is that you're in it with the rest of us. Were you wealthy enough to stand on your own, you wouldn't be posting on DU. And be sure and let us know when some corporation is stomping on your face. I suspect your tune might change and that would be a hoot.

[Odin2005]

20. Absentee landlords have no moral right to "their property".

[RBInMaine]

3. Hm, some local government action to try to help the town. Gee, maybe government DOES have a role.

[drm604]

6. If the union has the right of first refusal can't they just go to court

to prevent this?

[formercia]

7. One-way contracts

are to keep little people under control.

[Starry Messenger]

8. k&r

[MadMaddie]

15. This will be very interesting

"Eminent domain powers under the Fifth Amendment". We usually see Eminent domain used to steal land from home owners in the name of what's good for a city. That's against an individual.

Now we are talking about a seizing a company for the good of the community.

Intresting indeed...

[blindpig]

17. UE kicks ass

the best union in the country.

[Odin2005]

19. But, but, that's... SOCIALISM!!!

I hope it works out! :D