Was buying a supposed American toaster when infact he bought a Mexican
toaster.

Just got a recent issue of Fine Steel Crafting. In there is an old
story about
Black & Decker closing plants and moving production to Mexico.

This is rather pathetic and thought such informaiton would
be of interest to this group.


The goal is to put 1300 workers out of work and to eliminate another
choice for the consumer. That choice being the ability to find and
purchase American produced hardware. The thought is that they will
save $100 Million also.


I think it is high time we as consumers make sure that Black and Decker

never sees that $100 million. By that I'm suggesting that each end
everyone one of us commit to not purchasing Black & Decker manufactured

equipment in any form.


Yes I realize that it is hard or in some cases impossible to find
American made tools in certain catagories. But this is a corporate
attack
on the long standing American workers and a product line that has years

of history in this country. Special effort in this case, that is to
boycott all products from Black and Decker, seems to be the least we
can
do.


So how about it - Do you think that we as a community can act to
prevent
Black & Decker from making a profit for the forseeable future?


Thanks

Joe

I look at it like this.

1. You can buy an inferior toaster, made in the USA, at an inflated
price.

2. You can buy an inferior toaster, made overseas, at an appropriate
price.

3. You can buy a quality toaster, made anywhere, at an appropriate
price.

Why should you pick option 1, if you have half a brain?

Why can't your domestic manufacturers provide option 3?

PDW

In article .com, Joe
wrote:

Was buying a supposed American toaster when infact he bought a Mexican
toaster.

Just got a recent issue of Fine Steel Crafting. In there is an old
story about
Black & Decker closing plants and moving production to Mexico.

This is rather pathetic and thought such informaiton would
be of interest to this group.


The goal is to put 1300 workers out of work and to eliminate another
choice for the consumer. That choice being the ability to find and
purchase American produced hardware. The thought is that they will
save $100 Million also.


I think it is high time we as consumers make sure that Black and Decker

never sees that $100 million. By that I'm suggesting that each end
everyone one of us commit to not purchasing Black & Decker manufactured

equipment in any form.


Yes I realize that it is hard or in some cases impossible to find
American made tools in certain catagories. But this is a corporate
attack
on the long standing American workers and a product line that has years

of history in this country. Special effort in this case, that is to
boycott all products from Black and Decker, seems to be the least we
can
do.


So how about it - Do you think that we as a community can act to
prevent
Black & Decker from making a profit for the forseeable future?


Thanks

Joe

I have always avoided B&D products.

They tend to be junk.

Buy a Ryobi or Makita product, it will last much longer.

Amen!

"Joe" wrote in message
oups.com...
Was buying a supposed American toaster when infact he bought a Mexican
toaster.

Just got a recent issue of Fine Steel Crafting. In there is an old
story about
Black & Decker closing plants and moving production to Mexico.

This is rather pathetic and thought such informaiton would
be of interest to this group.


The goal is to put 1300 workers out of work and to eliminate another
choice for the consumer. That choice being the ability to find and
purchase American produced hardware. The thought is that they will
save $100 Million also.


I think it is high time we as consumers make sure that Black and Decker

never sees that $100 million. By that I'm suggesting that each end
everyone one of us commit to not purchasing Black & Decker manufactured

equipment in any form.


Yes I realize that it is hard or in some cases impossible to find
American made tools in certain catagories. But this is a corporate
attack
on the long standing American workers and a product line that has years

of history in this country. Special effort in this case, that is to
boycott all products from Black and Decker, seems to be the least we
can
do.


So how about it - Do you think that we as a community can act to
prevent
Black & Decker from making a profit for the forseeable future?


Thanks

Joe

Porter Gable, Craftsman, Mac, are all good tools.

If you ever break or find a broken Craftsman hand tool take it to any
Sears store for a free new re-placement!

Joe

"Peter Wiley" wrote in message
. ..

I look at it like this.

1. You can buy an inferior toaster, made in the USA, at an inflated
price.

2. You can buy an inferior toaster, made overseas, at an appropriate
price.

3. You can buy a quality toaster, made anywhere, at an appropriate
price.

Why should you pick option 1, if you have half a brain?

Why can't your domestic manufacturers provide option 3?

PDW

Shareholders. Read the book.

http://tinylink.com/?TaVIek6con

John Cairns

In article . com, Joe
wrote:

because option 3 may involve child slave labor in China and latino
sweat shops in S. America that pay labor 35 cents a day, and have no
rules and regulations that protect workers and the enviroment.

True, but now you're dealing with the cheap end of the market. The
really good stuff rarely - I hesitate to say never - comes from those
places. More likely Europe with at least as high oncosts as the USA.

As for China, I think you're *badly* underestimating the sophistication
of their manufacturing plant. Sure labour is still cheap, but they're
importing their raw materials and paying world prices for them. Their
energy costs are pretty close to international, certainly WRT oil. They
take those materials, put them through a magic process called a
'factory' and goods people want to buy emerge from the other end.

As for labour pay rates, I heard this back in the 70's and 80's about
Japan. Guess what Japan's pay scales are like these days? Compare
Toyota's car manufacturing quality and volume with GM or Ford. Why is
Toyota so successful these days, despite having a lot worse energy
budget and raw materials situation? The unpalatable answer, for you
guys, is that they can make better cars, cheaper.

China is doing the same thing.

How are we suppose to compete with that?

Umm, Joe, it's called 'investment of capital'. You don't try to compete
on a labourer for labourer basis because you're going to lose, either
economically or standard of living. You leverage your brains and
technology and automate production. That's the *only* way you're gonna
build better, cheaper.

Now we have a billion people in India going after the white collar
design jobs. How can corporate America resist a degreed engineer at
1/16th of the cost who can do the same job via the internet?

Shrug. Those guys in India are going after jobs in my areas of
expertise. I don't care, why should you? Fact is, it'll free up
resources to be used in other areas. Those areas may not be in the USA,
and they may not do your economy any good, but so sad, too bad, those
Indians need to spend money on something. Might be good for us.

And I'm all for fair trade, but if it's not dollar for dollar with the
trader then we need to fix the in-balance.

Riiiiight. Tell me how you're going to insist that China and India buy
overpriced American manufactures, then. Even software development is
going to India and anyone with half a brain would at least be looking
at Microsoft losing its near monopoly on operating systems and the
leverage it gives them to sell MS Office etc.

About the only stuff foreigners might be willing to buy are your
sophisticated military gear, at typical military prices. However,
Europe makes good stuff too, and there's a real strategic problem
selling huge and state of the art arms to potential enemies.

A real good start might be by fixing your own massive debt problem. The
fact is, you guys can't run a closed economy, it isn't an option for
you in the 21C. Therefore you can't run a real protectionist regime and
keep imports out, because if you do, so will other people do it to you,
and with the growth of China and India, I can't think offhand of
anything the USA actually makes that can't be sourced elsewhere quite
easily. You have little international economic leverage and what you
have, you're losing.

I'd care a lot more about your problems if they weren't almost 100% of
your own making. Every time I hear someone talking about fair trade, I
know I'm hearing someone who can't compete.

Barring a real and sustained environmental crash, China and India *are*
going to industrialise and their population's std of living *is* going
to rise. That means they'll have disposable income over what's needed
for subsistence. You can see this as a threat, as you do, or an
opportunity, as I do, but it's gonna happen. I really don't care if you
guys want to sit it out, but we're not going to.

BTW I use a premium priced computer from Apple Corp. Got nothing to do
with price, it's got the best o/s currently available, runs the s/ware
I need to use, is highly reliable as well as pretty, and is well made.
I used to despise Apple Corp because they had a POS of an o/s with a
nice GUI layered over it.

Why don't I use a made in China (or Malaysia etc etc) clone running
Linux or Windows? Got nothing to do with the price.....

PDW

On 6 Mar 2006 10:34:25 -0800, "Joe" wrote:

Was buying a supposed American toaster when infact he bought a Mexican
toaster.

Just got a recent issue of Fine Steel Crafting. In there is an old
story about
Black & Decker closing plants and moving production to Mexico.

This is rather pathetic and thought such informaiton would
be of interest to this group.


The goal is to put 1300 workers out of work and to eliminate another
choice for the consumer. That choice being the ability to find and
purchase American produced hardware. The thought is that they will
save $100 Million also.


I think it is high time we as consumers make sure that Black and Decker

never sees that $100 million. By that I'm suggesting that each end
everyone one of us commit to not purchasing Black & Decker manufactured

equipment in any form.


Yes I realize that it is hard or in some cases impossible to find
American made tools in certain catagories. But this is a corporate
attack
on the long standing American workers and a product line that has years

of history in this country. Special effort in this case, that is to
boycott all products from Black and Decker, seems to be the least we
can
do.


So how about it - Do you think that we as a community can act to
prevent
Black & Decker from making a profit for the forseeable future?


Thanks

Joe


Two points:

The company that I used to work for is now owned by B & D. They
bought the company in Octoberof 2004. Prior to B & D buying the
company the prior owners (Pentair) were trying to move everything to
China as fast as they possibly could. They didn't care if what they
peddled was junk as long as they could make a bigger profit. B & D is
trying to reverse some of that. They like to keep the machining
operations in the U.S. and just assemble in Mexico. By doing so they
can offer the best of both worlds, a higher quality product with the
cost structure of lower cost assembly labor.

Which do you think is worse, importing junk from china (pretty much
all my old competitors) or leaving the high paying machining jobs in
the U. S. and assembling good product in Mexico. I for one will keep
buying B & D products.

Point two. The last toaster I bought, I went with the intention of
starting with the lowest cost toaster and working my way up to the
first american made toaster which I planned to buy. I never got
there. Out of about fifteen models at Lowes, none were American made.

Some things you will just have to do without if you want to buy
American.

Real men buy Snap On Tools.

Just so they can get the calendars.

AAMEN!


"Joe" wrote in message
oups.com...
Porter Gable, Craftsman, Mac, are all good tools.

If you ever break or find a broken Craftsman hand tool take it to any
Sears store for a free new re-placement!

Joe

Joe,

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...craftsman.html

"Joe" wrote in message
oups.com...
Porter Gable, Craftsman, Mac, are all good tools.

If you ever break or find a broken Craftsman hand tool take it to any
Sears store for a free new re-placement!

Joe

Joe, B&D has owned Porter Cable since 2004.

John Cairns