Workers at the Bloomington GE plant, already buffeted by more than a decade of layoffs, have a new worry with this week’s announcement that GE is selling its consumer appliance division.
The plant, part of that division, began operations on Bloomington’s west side in the mid-1960s.
It is the only General Electric plant in the United States that manufactures side-by-side refrigerators, hugely popular before the turn of the century but which have lost significant market share to refrigerators with top- or bottom-load freezers.
The Swedish giant Electrolux has agreed to pay $3.3 billion for GE’s consumer appliance division. The deal still must be approved by regulators, and sale details between the two companies must be worked out.
But there are already worries about the sale’s effects on the Bloomington plant and on the people who work there.
Among them: how manufacturing redundancy will be addressed as two major manufacturers combine operations, the effect of the merger on already negotiated retirement benefits, the new parent company’s response to unions and whether the union will be negotiating its next contract with GE or with Electrolux.
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