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

[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.