OT: Need prayers, my plant is relocating

You will be paying the employer�s part of your taxes as well as the employee part as well. Your cost of living will be much higher than you expect. I would recommend that you negotiate a Per Deem for food, phone, and incidental expenses, full reimbursement for hotel and travel, with a set number of days away before returning home.

If your contract is month to month, your wages would need to be MUCH (2 � 5 times) higher than for a long term contract of several years.

The business you described has been a rough & tumble one for the past 10 years. I've been in it for 25 years and have never seen the buy, sell, etc that we have seen over the past several years. But, the sad fact is that the electrical strain-gage based transducer business has always been cut-throat with slim profit margins all around. If you have a specific skill or knowledge in this business to sell to others, you have something to go on. Might try some of the many test labs in and around that area or even MTS etc. Good Luck.

Good Luck...Everything will work out for the Best!

We could probably hire illegal immigrants for congress for $10K a year and no benefits. Legal work could be done via the Internet by a lowly paid person in China. Sounds as reasonable to me as the things that are going on today.

I think you are on the right track with the contract approach. I ran an engineering group at a casting plant in Muskegon and we found that contract employees were often a good way to go. A job that we would proably fill with a full-time guy making about $55~$60K annually, we would pay a contractor somewhere around $40~$45/hr. We would also have the advantage of tweaking the hours from week to week if things got on the slow side so our annual costs could be lowered.

While you are on the contractor"s clock, you can do some serious networking. This can take you to the next position and nobody would be surprised if you find another job. Get yourself a headhunter too. They can be working for you while you are running the roads.

Make sure you can cover your expenses while you are traveling. Get some sort of allowance structure set up for meals, hotel, and fuel. Even if they balk at the thought of this beyond your contracted wage rate, it will give you something else to negotiate and offer an opportunity to bump the hourly charge a bit.

It"s a cold world out there and there are many folks in the same slot as you. Those who will survive are the ones who work from the ears up and create their own opportunities.

Best of luck

Sister in law worked for Modine Manufacturing for 22 years (they build radiators for heavy equipment), company was bought out on July 22 (Friday). When they arrived for work on July 25, (the next Monday) they were informed all hourly employeees were laid off - immediately - go clean your lockers out. Management gets to stay on for a couple weeks to tear down the equipment so it can be sent to Mexico. Considering the fact that Interstate Bakeries just closed shop a couple months ago the town of 25,000 now has about 800 unemployed hitting the bricks looking for work.

Nope, this is the fall of the American Empire. We've bought our ticket and like the Romans we have our Circus (entertainment/TV) so get some land, pay it off, grow a garden and try to save some $$$. I don't see it changing.

I guess that I'm surprised that these transducer companies have not been bought out by Asian companies. The transducers are not cheap and most often the transducer has to be ordered before it is manufactured. There are not many shelf items available in this industry and they are VERY expensive.

Would that company in Michigan be either Key or Lebow? Would the company in Ohio be Kulite? Just wondering as I have purchased a lot of torque sensors and pressure transducers. BIG BUCKS!

You have knowledge they need. Make them pay what it's worth. Good luck.

Today I stopped to pickup some cable from another tech I sometimes work with. He's dismantling an almost new $250K telephone system that was just sold to ??? for $45K through liquidation as that company closed it's operations here and moves to AZ with it's new parent company. Is a trend. Buy a company to own a particular product to either bolster stock to the holders, or to deep-6 a compareable better product hampering their product line. Is sad. But there is some light in your tunnel, your partner (wife) if helping in time of need. Some don't have such a partner.

Here's one most aren't thinking about. Most of our foundries and steel mills are gone (overseas). Most items sold in stores are produced in China. Very little is produced in these United States. During WWII for instance, many US companies shut down and re-tooled for the war effort. Right? Ford made jeeps, trucks, airplanes, and you get the idea. Many companies did so. What companies are left here to do that? Anyone expect that if we ever get into another situation like that again that those Chinese government owned companies producing everything we buy, will shut down and re-tool to protect or defend the good ol' USA? Our country is being sold down the drain and liquidated from within, on both side of the aisles and for the most part, John Q-public has no idea or care as he buys that crap from Walmart, Harbor Freight, etc. Asleep at the wheel as our country is being taken apart one worker at a time.

Keep in mind that the keepers of the ink pen always know better than anyone, in their world. Good luck buddy, honestly.

Mark