Congress’ decision forces GE plant closure

De-funding lending institution sends jobs to Canada.

When President Barack Obama visited General Electric’s sprawling, red brick engine factory here in January 2014, he praised it as a sign that manufacturing in America could have a promising future. “We’re here because you’re doing some really good stuff,” Obama said. Plants like this, he declared, “can be a model for the country.”

On Sept. 28, however, the Waukesha plant manager told the workers that the factory would be shut. GE, he said, had decided to shift production of the industrial engines — and the workers’ jobs — to Canada.

What happened in less than two years to change things so much? At the center is a politically charged dispute over a usually obscure agency, the Export-Import Bank.

That dispute reaches a turning point today, when supporters from both parties of the now shuttered federal agency will force a vote in the House of Representatives to reopen it — the culmination of a monthslong revolt against some of the most powerful Republicans in Congress, who want the bank dead.

When the workers assembled last month, they were told the Waukesha factory was being shut because Congress had failed to fund the Export-Import Bank, which plays a small but often crucial role in America’s export trade.

Conservative Republicans have singled out the bank as a symbol of “corporate welfare,” saying it hands out generous subsidies, especially to big companies like GE. This year, House Republicans blocked a vote to renew funding for the bank.

Republican supporters of the bank teamed up with Democrats on a rarely used tactic, gathering 218 signatures from both parties on a petition to force a vote to reopen the bank.

No ground has been broken and no site has been selected for the new Canadian factory. If funding for the Export-Import Bank is quickly restored, will the Waukesha plant and its workers be spared?

No, said John G. Rice, GE’s vice chairman for global operations, the decision is irreversible. An extension of Export-Import Bank funding, he said, would not remove the business risk that the bank might be killed a few years later.

The plant move will affect 350 workers. Of those, 291 are hourly factory employees, with the rest mainly supervisors and engineers.