Edwards times speech to Maytag closing [View All]

Edwards times speech to Maytag closing
By John McCormick
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DES MOINES – Doug Bishop is a big, burly man who once worked on a factory assembly line. He's not the sort you would expect to be on the brink of tears when speaking in front of a room full of people.

But there he was this morning, on stage at a small, downtown theater, choking back his emotions. Bishop is not alone.

For many, this is an emotional week in Iowa, as one of the state's trademark companies, Maytag Corp., closed its last production line Thursday in nearby Newton, sending home 550 workers for the last time.

The closing means that for the first time in 114 years Maytag products will no longer be produced in the company's longtime home. Whirlpool Corp., which purchased the company for $2.6 billion last year, closed the plant.

Bishop, now the treasurer of Jasper County, Iowa, introduced former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for a smartly timed economic policy speech.

The plant's closing gave Edwards yet another chance to hammer home his populist message, reaching back to his roots as the son of a mill worker.

Bishop, dressed in black to mourn the plant's closing, spoke about when he first met Edwards in 2004, when he was Sen. John Kerry's running mate. He said he would never forget what Edwards said to his young son that day.

"'I'm going to keep fighting for your daddy's job,'" Bishop recalled Edwards saying, as he knelt on his knee to talk to the boy. "'I promise you that.'"

With that warm-up act, Edwards launched into a policy speech that criticized executive pay and the loss of worker benefits.

He called for universal retirement savings accounts that would follow workers from job to job, universal health care, stronger corporate responsibility laws and greater consumer protections.

Edwards also pledged to create new "Get Ahead" credits where the government would match dollar-for-dollar, up to $500 in savings a year. He later said he would pay for the program by more aggressively collecting capital gains taxes and by raising capital gains rates for those who earn more than $250,000 a year.

While speaking to reporters after his speech, Edwards was asked how his approach to the plight of the middle class differs from that of Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

"I don't talk about this from an abstract, academic perspective," Edwards said. "It's something I've lived."

During his speech, Edwards repeatedly reached into the past to point to times of greater fairness for workers.

"American companies used to have a strong sense of obligation both to their workers and to America's well-being," he said. "Henry Ford knew that his company would prosper only if his own workers earned enough to actually buy the Fords that were being produced."

Edwards also pointed to a more modern CEO as a role model: Jim Sinegal, the founder and CEO of Costco, someone he described as a longtime friend and supporter.

He then quoted Sinegal: "'You get what you pay for. If you hire good people, pay them good wages and provide good jobs and careers, good things will happen to your business.'"

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/10/edwards_times_speech_to_maytag.html