Deere & Company World Headquarters
One John Deere Place
Moline, IL 61265

I remember when they were on contract strike at the Ankeny plant sometime around a year ago. The local media was taking it all cavalierly, like this happens all the time. Big time labor and management disagreements. Uh-huh. We don’t have any factories left. When Maytag moved to Mexico, that was about it. Little warning bells were going off in my head. This new breed of management does not trifle with labor. They’re like the Walmart store that unionized, they just closed down and moved it out overnight. They don’t give a rip about labor or ‘old Joe’ whose been there 30 years. They don’t even care about the company. They don’t even invest in the company. They simply inflate the price of stock to make themselves and the board rich through stock buybacks. The farmer outside of Ankeny who has been buying “Green for 40 years!” cares more about that company than the CEO does.

(In Iowa lingo John Deere is Green, Allis Chalmers was Red, and Ford was Blue. No intermarriages, you went to separate churches, and yes, shots were fired.)