We don’t think it’s far fetched to describe Harley–Davidson as a beleaguered company right now but it seems like it just got through a round of tough union negotiations which should see it make some savings.
The company has been making some big losses recently and had gone shopping for new production facilities to cut costs, with a possible result being all 1,350 employees in the Wisconsin area losing their jobs.
Faced with an entire production shut-down and factory move out of Milwaukee, union workers have agreed to new contracts over a seven year period that cut worker numbers by 250 and offer casual work contracts in the place of full-time contracts with benefits.
Given these changes it was more attractive for Harley–Davidson, cost-wise, to stay put than to move to other facilities and incur the costs of establishing new premises.
In fact, initial savings to the end of 2013 are said to be to the tune of $50 million.
The union has gone so far as to say it’s happy to have kept jobs in Wisconsin but you could hardly call it a victory.
Whether another example of just how good we’d all got it before the crisis hit, it’s a tough pill to swallow when you’re a worker.
A Harley–Davidson failure would be nothing on the national scale of General Motors, but it would still put some local towns in hard times.
Here’s hoping the new agreement keeps things rolling along heathily.