Romney’s ‘Business Experience’: Firing Workers, Hiring Them Back at Lower Wages

by Mike Hall, May 31, 2007

Republican candidate Mitt Romney says he doesn’t need the $400,000-a-year presidential paycheck. If he wins, he says he’ll donate the money to charity. After all, with an estimated $250 million nest egg from his corporate career—which included buying and selling companies as head of an investment firm—400 grand is sort of like the loose change most of us toss into the coin jar on the dresser.

But when he made that announcement Tuesday, it rattled a skeleton that had been hanging in the back of Romney’s closet since his 1994 failed U.S. Senate race against Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). The skeleton has the video, too: One that shows workers who desperately needed their paychecks. But they were laid off when a company bought by Romney’s investment firm, Bain Capital, then purchased the workers’ Indiana office supply company—and laid off all the workers.

On Huffington Post, Thomas Edsall brings to light Kennedy’s 1994 campaign commercials of the workers contrasting Romney’s campaign claim that he was a job creator with reality. He writes:

All 350 workers at the SCM plant were laid off, then offered their jobs back at reduced wages. They went on strike. The Kennedy campaign sent a crew to Marion to film the workers. A half dozen ads resulted from the interviews, most of them quoting workers denouncing Romney for lining his pockets at their expense.

Shades of Circuit City, anyone?

Here’s what some of the laid-off workers had to say.

• “If he created jobs, I wish he could create some here instead of, you know, taking them away.”
• “I don’t think Romney is creating jobs because he took every one of them away.”
• “They cut the wages…we no longer had insurance…we had no rights anymore.”
• “He cut our wages to put money back in his pocket.”

Yet apparently such “business expertise” gets you high praise from the mainstream media. On the May 30 edition of NBC’s “Today,” co-host Matt Lauer said “many” are describing Romney as looking “presidential.” To which Tim Russert replied:

Matt, I think your interview and your analysis is exactly on target. Mitt Romney is seen as someone who looks presidential with the business and CEO experience.

Firing workers wholesale and offering their jobs back at lower wages—great background for president.

But let’s look at the bright side of a Romney presidency. If he has enough money in his pocket to turn down the $400,000-a-year chump change, maybe he’ll offer to pay rent, too.

For more information on Romney and all the presidential candidates, visit the AFL-CIO’s Working Families Vote 2008 site.

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