Agricultural machinery supplier and producer John Deere, known for its distinctively green machinery, announced at the end of July that it would be laying off hundreds of production staff at its plants in Illinois and Iowa. It has since begun those layoffs, and they included laying off a married couple on the same day at an Iowa plant.
As background, in late July, John Deere, despite raking in over $10 billion in profits last year, announced that it would be laying off about 610 production staff at its midwest plants. The two impacted plants are the East Moline, Illinois, plant, where 280 jobs were slashed, and the Davenport, Iowa, factory, where 230 jobs were cut. Further, Deere said that another 100 jobs will be cut from its Dubuque, Iowa, plant.
In a statement on the layoffs, Deere said, “We can confirm Deere leadership recently communicated that rising operational costs and declining market demand requires enterprise-wide changes in how work gets done to achieve our goals and best position the company for the future.”
The announcement of the layoffs came just weeks after John Deere announced that it would be moving production of its skid steer loaders and compact track loaders from the manufacturing plant in Dubuque, from which 100 jobs will be cut, to Mexico, by the end of 2026. Regulations are less severe, and employment costs are lower in Mexico.
Addressing that globalization and its shipment of good manufacturing jobs out of the country, John Deere said in another statement, “This includes optimizing our factories for future products, making our operations more efficient and taking advantage of locations in the U.S. and globally, with a growing labor force.”
It was the Davenport factory, Davenport Works, where Mathew Shiltz and his wife were laid off on the same day. Speaking to local media station WSAW, Shiltz said, “It was tough. I mean, we kind of already knew it. When I had heard it I was, I was on second shift. So the first-shift meeting had already happened. So when I got to work at noon that day, people had told me and we kind of knew it was happening beforehand.”
Shiltz added that he feels disappointed and betrayed by the company, which contrasts with how he formerly felt about the brand, which he saw as having integrity. Mr. Shiltz also noted that the layoffs will crush the community, which is reliant on John Deere, saying, “That’s the thing. This community and the Quad Cities is heavily Deere-based with four plants in the area. So when they take these kinds of hits, it doesn’t just affect Deere, it affects a lot of people.”
He added that he has had to take odd jobs around the community to make ends meet in the wake of the crushing layoffs, saying, “I went and helped a guy move a washer, do some mowing, just try and pick up some cash jobs to keep my unemployment, you know, but that’s it. It’s going to be hard for me, really hard.”
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In the wake of the layoffs, the UAW said in a statement, “Let’s be clear: there is no need for Deere to kill good American jobs and outsource them to Mexico for cheap labor. The company is forecasted to make $7 billion in profit this year. CEO John May’s total compensation for 2023 was $26.8 million. The company has spent $43.6 billion on stock buybacks and dividends over the past two decades. There is no question that there is enough profit to go around, and Deere can afford to keep good jobs in Iowa and Illinois.”
It continued, “So why are they choosing not to? Because Deere’s corporate greed means more to them than the lives of working class people in Ankeny, Waterloo, Ottumwa, or Dubuque. And our government lets them get away with it, with broken trade laws that don’t protect workers on either side of the border.”
It then noted, “The UAW is hard at work trying to minimize the impacts of these cuts and layoffs for our members at Deere and pushing the company to do right by our members, their families, and their communities. But when a company is doing as well as Deere, on the hard work of those UAW members who make the product that generates those profits, there is absolutely no reason for job cuts, layoffs, outsourcing, or cutbacks. We will keep pushing for justice at Deere and keep letting corporate America know that the working class will not accept the scraps while the CEOs and shareholders get richer and richer.”
Featured image credit: By Lawrence Fink – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20206438
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