Breaking News
Washington - Still think your brand new, shiny, happy people-faced government administration isn’t out to screw YOU?
300 workers from Alabama condom factory Alatech Healthcare Products are about to get the sack because YOUR friendly government pricks have a stiffie for pimping YOUR jobs to the third world.
As the last U.S.-based supplier of condoms for global HIV/AIDS prevention programs, Alatech could be forced to shut its doors because the federal government sent the work to cheaper suppliers in Asia who claim they will produce the global ream-wrappers for 2 cents vs. Alatech’s 5 cents.
Okay. Maybe working in a rubber plant isn’t the most exotic job, but somebody has to do it.
But China will make them? Last year, 2Truthy reported shocking details here about how China recycles used condoms into hair bands which spread the same sexually-transmittable diseases that condoms were originally meant to prevent. No WONDER Alatech’s one-eyed-trouser snake covers cost a lousy 3 cents more!
Company President Larry Povlacs said Alatech provided durable condoms at USAID's request and was never asked to address any complaints about that style. He said *insert shcok here* that USAID simply wanted the cheapest product without regard for his workers in Dothan and Eufaula, Ala.
"I'm faced with telling people that I've worked with for 30 years that they may no longer have a job," Povlacs said.
Shortly after Congress omitted the “buy American” language for the program in its latest spending bill, USAID quickly signed new contracts with three foreign suppliers and dropped Alatech altogether. The new contractors are in China, South Korea and Malaysia.
Povlacs said he is working with lawmakers to get "buy American" language restored in next year's spending bill, and company officials are meeting with USAID this week. A spokesman for Rep. Bobby Bright, a Democrat whose district is home to Alatech, said he also is exploring other avenues to help the firm.
-2Truthy
4 comments:
At the risk of sounding like, "Wow, is Citizen Carrie ever missing the point", I just want to mention that I did an inventory of my bath towels recently and I found two (made in North Carolina) that are 28 years old!. And they're not stuck in the back of the linen closet all of the time - they're in the regular rotation. Sure, I don't hang them up in the guest bathroom, and they're worn and a little bit faded, but they're a little worn, not falling apart like every other bath towel I've bought since then, including some that are only about a year old.
So, does anyone want to use a condom that can be manufactured 2 cents cheaper somewhere else? How can we possibly get away from all of this CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! I want to buy higher quality products, but even the stuff I pay top dollar for at the higher end stores fall apart within a year.
"I want to buy higher quality products, but even the stuff I pay top dollar for at the higher end stores fall apart within a year."
The ultimate screw job: They've figured out that not only can they now get away with slashing quality (because "quality" goods and services are now exclusively reserved for corporate and politico crooks) but they can simultaneously raise prices despite the inferior quality that, as you allude to above, we can only come to expect.
I hear you on the towels, same thing here.
Quality?!!! Who do you people think you are? Sure, I still use furniture and household items (and, believe it or not, even articles of clothing) that my lower-middle-class parents purchased - without going into debt - in the 1930s. But they weren't raising kajillions of Third Worlders out of poverty they way we are with our craptastic lifestyles. What kind of xenophobic, immoral assholes are you people, anyway? Oh, so your royal highnesses wish to own towels that don't fall apart in 6 months? F&*(^%ing racists.
Ha. I hear ya. My family and I are so sick of low-quality crap that we've severely reduced our wonted consumption in the last few years - not because we were ever extravagant or because we've been forced into the ranks of the hurtin' (yet), but because...hey, why buy new, say, towels, if within two months the old towels are still going to look better and function better than any new stuff we could purchase? I got yer "consumer confidence" right here, buster.
Splendid, RO!:)
Now, the million ruppee question is this: when do the newly minted, Banana Republic American taxpayers "just say no" to subsidizing people of OTHER third world countries?
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