WOOHOO! Beretta moving to Tennessee

[Adam]

Beretta bringing R&D, manufacturing facility to Gallatin

Gunmaker Beretta USA plans to build a $45 million manufacturing and research and development facility in Gallatin, company and state officials announced today.

The new site, expected to begin production in the first quarter of 2015 at the Gallatin Industrial Park, will initially create 300 jobs.

Gov. Bill Haslam said the project will be a "state-of-the-art firearms manufacturing and R&D facility."

Jeff Reh, a member of Beretta USA's board, said the company has an immediate need to start building various types of sporting rifles and shotguns, which it will produce at the Gallatin plant along with tactical product lines.

"It was really more the superlatives we saw in Gallatin and in Tennessee, rather than deficiencies in any of the other [locations]," Reh said. "The site was perfect. It's already ready for development. The level of community support was better."

[....]

Reh said that Tennessee's reputation as a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights played a role in landing the facility, a line that drew applause during today's announcement. Beretta also operates a plant in Maryland, which recently passed stricter gun laws and drew threats from Beretta on relocating.

"It was that combination of factors that really pointed us in this direction," Reh said. Beretta will continue operations at its Maryland plant, he said, adding that "almost all the employees [in the Gallatin plant] will come from Tennessee."

Assuming history continues as it has with other companies, Beretta will eventually wind up moving more of their operations and/or their headquarters here. Suits me just fine!

[Billy Jingo]

New jobs. Outstanding.

Doubt they will move government contract work out of Maryland, though. Bad politics.

[JB]

Doubt they will move government contract work out of Maryland, though. Bad politics.

Doubt Maryland wants them to move 300+ jobs out of state. Bad governing.

[Frostbit]

Doubt Maryland wants them to move 300+ jobs out of state. Bad governing.

Colorado apparently didn't care much about losing MAGPUL

[Adam]

Assuming history continues as it has with other companies, Beretta will eventually wind up moving more of their operations and/or their headquarters here. Suits me just fine!

I was right, though even sooner than I thought.

Good job, Governor O'Faily!





Now, let's see if we can siphon off Black & Decker, McCormick, and IBM.

[scott]

I was right, though even sooner than I thought.

Good job, Governor O'Faily!





Now, let's see if we can siphon off Black & Decker, McCormick, and IBM.

Good news for the concept of states being laboratories of Democracy. Of course it's going to be a compromise if more manufacturing emerges, especially with respect to unions. However, maybe the local unions will buck the trend of their national sponsors and actually get back to what they were good doing in the past.

[Adam]

Good news for the concept of states being laboratories of Democracy. Of course it's going to be a compromise if more manufacturing emerges, especially with respect to unions. However, maybe the local unions will buck the trend of their national sponsors and actually get back to what they were good doing in the past.

Tennessee's been pretty damn solid about bucking the union trend. People here, even Democrats and relative liberals, just flat-out don't like unions. Nissan still operates without a union in Smyrna (and there have been A LOT of attempts by the UAW to get in the door there). You saw what happened in Chattanooga with VW (VW ultimately opened the back door to the UAW, and a bunch of people who work there are not happy about it). Peterbilt had probably one of the strongest union presences here, and they went on strike, so Peterbilt packed their shit and left, with people here pissed at the UAW workers. It was unstated, of course, but around Madison, if you were a picketing UAW member, you did not get any of the few jobs around in 2009-2011 or so, even if that job was a cashier at the mini-mart on Myatt Drive. What the UAW ultimately did was hurt (and indeed in some cases actually close down) some associated businesses. Even my brother, riding around with his "Obama/Biden '08" sticker still on his car (slapped over the "Kerry/Edwards '04" sticker) just rolls his eyes at the mention of unions, as do all of his friends. I can get together with him and a bunch of his liberal friends, and if there's one thing that we can all agree on, it's that we don't like unions in the least. And for the most part, they hold little power here. Even the police and firefighters' unions don't really hold that much sway: they're really a lot more like trade associations than they are unions.

ETA: and people in Spring Hill to this very day are pissed because when Saturn came along, they just imported a bunch of carpetbagger UAW members from Detroit rather than locals getting those good jobs.

You go mention the word "union" in the county seat of Sumner County and you're not talking about either a marriage or some matter of plumbing fitting, and they'll run you out of town on a rail!

[scott]

Tennessee's been pretty damn solid about bucking the union trend. People here, even Democrats and relative liberals, just flat-out don't like unions. Nissan still operates without a union in Smyrna (and there have been A LOT of attempts by the UAW to get in the door there). You saw what happened in Chattanooga with VW (VW ultimately opened the back door to the UAW, and a bunch of people who work there are not happy about it). Peterbilt had probably one of the strongest union presences here, and they went on strike, so Peterbilt packed their shit and left, with people here pissed at the UAW workers. It was unstated, of course, but around Madison, if you were a picketing UAW member, you did not get any of the few jobs around in 2009-2011 or so, even if that job was a cashier at the mini-mart on Myatt Drive. What the UAW ultimately did was hurt (and indeed in some cases actually close down) some associated businesses. Even my brother, riding around with his "Obama/Biden '08" sticker still on his car (slapped over the "Kerry/Edwards '04" sticker) just rolls his eyes at the mention of unions, as do all of his friends. I can get together with him and a bunch of his liberal friends, and if there's one thing that we can all agree on, it's that we don't like unions in the least. And for the most part, they hold little power here. Even the police and firefighters' unions don't really hold that much sway: they're really a lot more like trade associations than they are unions.

ETA: and people in Spring Hill to this very day are pissed because when Saturn came along, they just imported a bunch of carpetbagger UAW members from Detroit rather than locals getting those good jobs.

You go mention the word "union" in the county seat of Sumner County and you're not talking about either a marriage or some matter of plumbing fitting, and they'll run you out of town on a rail!

While that's true, a massive influx of manufacturing an any labor market is going to increase the aggregate demand for unions now because it's a tough market to balance worker compensation and labor costs. If the company is already getting a bargain at $18 per hour, why set the wage at $15 an hour? Unions can and have seized on those opportunities. Like I said, hopefully they do so in ways that actually make sense instead of the UAW "solidarity" model.

There was a very unpublicized whisper campaign by the Teamsters to pre-unionize all the new Amazon workers in my county and it actually got some traction. When the thugs became idiots and started showing up at the proposed worksites (to show that they were in the loop too) the facility managers (also in the loop) had them kicked off the property. It almost spoiled the deal, which was the intent of the thugs. Some of us started booking hotel rooms in the vicinity of this small town so they had to drive and that was that. I cautioned one of the steering committee folks that this was just kicking a hornet's nest and we really should be more prepared for their next stunt.