The Milwaukee Journal has a story on Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman’s remarks this week before an Illinois business group, where he called for relaxed immigration laws to make it easier to attract workers — this after Cat announced last week it was laying of up to 300 people at its South Milwaukee plant.
From the story:
Caterpillar has seen foreign workers it trained in the United States leave for overseas competitors because they couldn’t get visas to stay in this country, Oberhelman said. And companies worldwide are scrambling to find engineers and scientists.
“When we recruit engineers from the University of Illinois, Purdue, Texas A&M, Stanford or wherever, we want the brightest talent. I really don’t care if that person was born in Chicago or India or England. I want that talent working for Caterpillar, not one of those competitors around the world,” Oberhelman said, according to a transcript of the speech he delivered Monday.
Also, Fox 6 was in South Milwaukee this week taking a closer look at the potential impact of the looming layoffs, as contract talks begin. The verdict — much remains to be seen. I’ll keep you posted.
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