Harley-Davidson workers say plant closure after tax cut is like a bad dream

The Trump tax cut is benefiting corporations and stockholders, not workers

Harley-Davidson plans job cuts in Kansas City and will add
positions in York County. (Photo: Keith Srakocic, AP)

Candy Woodall, USA Today, York (Pa.) Daily Record, May 27, 2018

YORK, Pa. — Harley-Davidson workers across the USA are reeling from the planned closure of the motorcycle maker's Kansas City plant, yet it is expected to reap huge financial benefits from the federal corporate tax cut.

The Milwaukee-based motorcycle manufacturer benefited from the tax cuts enacted Jan. 1, then announced cuts of 350 jobs across the company in late January. On Feb. 5 , it approved a half-cent dividend increase and buyback of up to 15 million shares.

Harley’s U.S. sales have been sinking in recent years as Boomers decide they are becoming too old to continue riding and fewer younger people step up to take their place. As a result, Harley said it was forced to cut excess factory capacity.

“Unfortunately there is nothing that could have been done to address the pressure of excess capacity we have in the U.S. market,” Harley said in a statement.

The company maintains that the dividend increase and stock buyback are unrelated to the tax savings.

► May 21: Loud Harleys: Is motorcycle noise sweet harmony or out-of-control din?
► May 11: Harley-Davidson to ship work to Thailand from U.S. plant, union says
► May 10: Shareholders ask questions, but media kept out of annual meeting

Workers say they are dismayed.

“We did everything Harley-Davidson asked us to do,” welder Tim Primeaux said in an NBC News interview that aired last week. "To have it all blow up in your face is kind of disappointing.”

When Harley-Davidson announced in January that it would slash 800 jobs upon closing the Kansas City plant by fall 2019, Primeaux said he and other workers were in a state of "shock and awe."

“It was like I was in a bad dream, just stuck in it," Primeaux told the network.

Second Class Citizens

After the recent passage of WISCONSIN ACT 248, "involving a boycott of Israel," and a City of Madison Mayoral Proclamation (below) declaring an "Israel Day," I thought we might benefit from some facts on the legal status of non-Jewish citizens of Israel.

Americans are too willing to assume that the only democracy in the Middle East has a written Constitution and Bill of Rights like theirs. The examples below are legal discrimination by the Israeli government. This unequal treatment under the law applies to over 1.7 million Israeli citizens in Israel, more than 21% of the population.¹ By comparison, African Americans are 13% of the U.S. population.¹²

A 2005 letter to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badger Herald argued that Israel was not South Africa:

The divestment campaign in South Africa was appropriate and legitimate because it garnered international recognition of apartheid, an internal system of exploitation and segregation forced upon a black majority by a white minority. Divestment legitimately targeted corporations that profited from this egregious situation. While some have argued that Israel is conducting apartheid policies against the Palestinian people and Arab-Israeli citizens, this comparison is absurd. Arab-Israeli citizens retain the same civil and political rights that any Jew possesses in Israel, with the ability to vote in elections and serve their constituents as elected officials. (emphasis added)

Unfortunately, this is not true. Israeli laws, and the civil and political rights they define, are different for different Israeli citizens. Israel's purpose in this is to maintain its status as a Jewish state, as Roland Nikles commented: