Buisnesses need to make a profit but instead of just profiting and expanding they are breaking the middle class in their profit taking schemes.

The top 10 percent of the population carried away some 48.5 percent of all reported income in the US in 2005—also the highest percentage since 1928, on the eve of the Depression—an increase of 2 percent from 2004, and up from 33 percent of the reported total in the late 1970s.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar200...

+1 Kay--Not to mention the same people complaining are probably those who run to Wal-Mart to buy everything just so they can pay the lowest possible price--never taking into account where or by who it was manufactured....

Oh for petes sake! Business owners are in business to make money not to run as a social service.
I'm sure most of these complainers don't know what the entire overhead of running a business is.
If sales are down theres no money to pay the bills, taxes and wages.

http://rushkoff.com/
Interesting new book about how the corporate culture has permeated and changed our society.

Happy Labor Day!

Tactics like these disgust me; I know I could never work in the business world with such seedy and slimeball ways of treating people. Yes I understand that the all-mighty dollar is king to some people in this world, and that a small dip in their multi-million dollar bonuses is more than enough justification to screw over "the little people" and pit "the little people" against each other, but really, how sad and shameful it is. I don't know how accurate it is, but "professor" posted somewhere else about the ratio of "top dog" salaries to "little person" wages. In the 1950s it was 40:1 and now it is something like 400:1???? If even remotely accurate, herein lies the real problem and source of greed.

Actually, the best outboard made nowadays is Evinrude E-TEC. Talk to anyone, boat maker, boat dealer, or anyone who has ever ran these Evinrudes and to my knowledge, no one can say anything bad about them. Great fuel economy, power, quietness, less maintenance, and all with a 2-stroke outboard. 4-strokes are nice, but expensive and have way to many parts that if broke down, expensive to repair. Mercury was my #1 outboard engine and still own it until Evinrude broke thru recently with their E-tecs. You can bet my next outboard when and if the Mercury ever costs more than 500 bucks to fix will be the 40 hp Evinrude E-TEC even though the cost has gone up a lot over 12 years ago when I paid 3500 for my 1997 last year made 4-cylinder smooth/powerful, but a gas hog, Mercury 40hp 2-stroke. Dealer told me to keep this engine since the 3 cylinders in 1998 improved fuel economy, but the smoothness of having 4 cylinders vs. 3 more than makes up for the loss in mpg.

In other words, management says " We need concessions so we can get bigger bonuses!" I don't see them taking cuts to remain competitive.

And as far as the sales drop off, with jobs being lost and the eco-nazis pushing for smaller cars (try pulling a boat with a Prius), that is no surprise.

I won't be buying any Mercury Marine products from now on. Strictly OMC or Suzuki from now on.

Tough decision but I think the right one. Now nobody can say the workers didn't try their absolute best to keep their jobs. Regardless of what Mercury does now the workers can say they did whatever it took on their end to keep things going.

Anyone care?

Anyone know what relevence the comment by MSW93 has to do this article at all??? I don't see any connection....

America at it's finest hour? NOT!

At least it is not like I know where some people who work in an office environment and without ANY notice, you come in to work, sit down, 5-10 minutes later, HR employee comes to your desk and says with no warning, pack up your desk, you have 5 minutes to get ready and take your personal belongings with you all the while the HR person watches you like a hawk and finally escorts you out the door for good. This has happened to several competent and good hearted people who are not deadbeats and who work hard and for many long years at the company. Now how is that? Let's hope a lot of OK workers can move up to Fondulac and Mercury Marine has worked for most of the workers willing to relocate to WI. I hate to see anyone go thru a major life event change and lose their job like I did in 1996. Not fun. I thought I had a great job with GM (non-union making 9 bucks per hour about in the 90's) in an office environment set for life. After 6 long hard years, out the door along with the entire office except for 4-5 people willing to relocate to Mlwk. with no pay raise or cost of living increase, just a moving package. No way. At least they gave the employees' the option to move, but what good would that have done since they closed that branch office in Mlwk. done 2-3 years later. If I was single and not married with kids, I would have probably stayed with GM just to keep a job, but not worth it since my wife had a much better career job than me at GM.