GE soon to close last US lightbulb plant

[Guest guest]

GE will soon be closing its last US lightbulb plant. Its blaming environmental regulations, but of course it heavily lobbied for the law banning incandescent bulbs. Why should Ge make cheap lightbulbs with expensive US labor when it could make vastly more expensive bulbs with cheap Chinese labor? and no environmental laws either. Nice that Immelt, who has overseen so much of the gutting of US industry, is now rubbing shoulders with Obama in the White House.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/op-eds/2009/08/timothy-p-carney-how-ges-green-lobbying-killing-us-factory-jobs

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“Government did us in,†says Dwayne Madigan, whose job will terminate when General Electric closes its factory next July.

Madigan makes a product that will soon be illegal to sell in the U.S. - a regular incandescent bulb. Two years ago, his employer, GE, lobbied in favor of the law that will outlaw the bulbs.

Madigan’s colleagues, waiting for their evening shift to begin, all know that GE is replacing the incandescents for now with compact fluorescents bulbs, which GE manufactures in China.

Last month, GE announced it will close the Winchester Bulb Plant 80 miles west of D.C. As a result, 200 men and women will lose their jobs. GE is also shuttering incandescent factories in Ohio and Kentucky, axing another 200 jobs.

GE blamed environmental regulations for the closing. The first paragraph of the company’s July 23 press release explained:

“A variety of energy regulations that establish lighting efficiency standards are being implemented in the U.S. and other countries, in some cases this year, and will soon make the familiar lighting products produced at the Winchester Plant obsolete.â€

The U.S. legislation in question was a provision in the 2007 energy bill that required all bulbs sold in the U.S.—beginning in 2012 for some wattages—to meet high efficiency standards.

Given the steady death of U.S. manufacturing, this factory was going to close sooner or later, anyway. Workers tell me they were happy when they heard in June that the factory was staying open at least through mid-2011—a plan GE abandoned the next month.

But the light bulb law is clearly the main driver in closing this factory. After all, the product they make here will be contraband by 2014.

“That was the nail in the coffin,†Madigan says.