Little if any local job loss, at least for now. A continued strong commitment to local manufacturing. The establishment of Oak Creek as a “nerve center” for a global mining business.
Heck, South Milwaukee can even say we’re still home to “Bucyrus.”
In other words, the potential fallout from Monday’s announcement regarding the sale of Bucyrus International to Caterpillar isn’t as damaging as it could be.
The Business Journal of Milwaukee has some new details gathered at an afternoon press conference at the South Milwaukee company.
See the full story here. From it:
Caterpillar Inc.’s acquisition of Bucyrus International Inc. isn’t likely to lead to immediate job cuts in the Milwaukee area.
In fact, Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar has vowed to create a global mining headquarters in Oak Creek at the site of the former Midwest Airlines corporate offices on South Howell Avenue.
Bucyrus currently has about 1,600 employees in the Milwaukee area, including about 880 hourly production workers, Sullivan said. The sale to Caterpillar doesn’t alter Bucyrus’ plans to add as many as 515 jobs, evenly split between administrative and production personnel, in the Milwaukee area in the immediate future, said Sullivan, who will leave the company after the deal closes.
“The great situation that we’re in today is that we’re in a booming market,” he said. “When two companies like this get together, you’re usually talking about cost synergies. We’re talking about expanding. My hope is that this is just the start and that we can continue to grow employment in the Milwaukee area.”
Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman also said he sees growth for Caterpillar’s mining operations, but added that it’s unlikely any Caterpillar manufacturing jobs would be shifted to South Milwaukee. And he wouldn’t completely rule out job losses: “I can’t say with certainty about anything with the state of the economy today, but we are very optimistic with where we see growth and what we see happening in the mining industry.”
Here is a story with additional local reaction from the Daily Reporter.
I’ll keep you posted on this story as it develops. And feel free to post your comments below. I’m interested to know what you think about this.
South Milwaukee Blog 