Hamilton joins the Rust Belt?

[pyat]

U.S. Steel bought Stelco last year, and now it's shutting down all Canadian operations.

That is very very very bad for the city. 2,000 jobs from the steel plant are bad enough, but there are thousands more tied up in support industries.

Comments

[relee.livejournal.com]

That sounds exceptionally bad.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

Stelco? Really?

Oh, man.

[saomigray.livejournal.com]

There weer layoff at Patrick's hospital yesterday too; one of them a recent hire from his department. This is starting to hit a little closer to home all over.

Layoffs

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry.

The governor of Puerto Rico today announced he's laying off 30,000 government workers.

Thirty thousand people on a little tiny island.

People who won't be buying gas, groceries, or restaurant meals for a while.

Not to mention what the economic pinch has done to tourism there.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

Dawn called that one. US Steel has a miserly reputation for running stuff into the ground and shutting it down. So the city is one step closer to either transforming into something else or choking. These are exciting (if potentially depressing) times. I wonder if I'll be able to get some money coming in to ride out the storm.

The important thing to remember is, Hamilton hasn't always been a steel town. Hamilton has been a number of other very impressive things in its history. This is just one more change for us. We'll get through it. I'm sure of it. It'll just take some imagination to reinvent ourselves into something other than a busload of factory workers.

Lee.

[forkly.livejournal.com]

My Dad works there. ;~;

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Oh, holy crap.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

(*starts hoarding steel*)

[zorinlynx.livejournal.com]

Why in the heck did Stelco sell out to foreign interests anyway?

I'm always saddened when I see countries giving up their companies to foreign interests. It was especially apalling to see Anheiser-Busch sell out. That was such a traditionally US institution.

And when companies do this, they really shouldn't be surprised when the foreign company shuts down their operations and terminates all the employees. :P

[warphammer.livejournal.com]

A-B at the least, didn't have much of a choice. Inbev got a simply gargantuan loan right before the bottom fell out of the credit market, and could make an offer not enough of the shareholders would refuse. This is what happens when you're a public company, one of the reasons I dislike working for them.

Of course, said loan now means the combined company is in massive debt. So now they're hacking the whole thing up. Whee. When they really get to cutting there and when Boeing runs out of F-18 orders, stuff's gonna be real fun here.

[cdnsplendor.livejournal.com]

It is a sad situation. My dad's been there for 29 years now. He's due for retirement in a year. Not a good situation for anyone right now..

[kianir.livejournal.com]

On behalf of the citizens of Michigan and metro Detroit: welcome to the party,

[dronon.livejournal.com]

Aieeee... Not good news. I hope the city manages to persevere! In brighter news though, the book you sent me arrived today!

Yup

[pxtl.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a guy in one of those support industries (I do software development for Steelcare, a warehousing operation that stores some US Steel/Stelco stuff)... that really, really sucks.