Economy
Burlington's roots are in transportation and manufacturing. Manufacturing plants are among the largest employers in the area, including companies such as American Ordnance LLC, Case Corporation, General Electric, Champion Spark Plugs, Lance Private Brands(formerly Vista Bakery), and BNSF Railway. The largest employer in the area is the Great River Medical Center. Among one of the oldest businesses in Burlington, the Murray factory (now Murray Turbomachinery and owned by Dresser-Rand) which has been in operation in Burlington since before 1900, the original building on Central St. and Washington St. which was divided by the local train tracks, was recently razed. Another long-lived business is Case Corporation, which has been at its current location on Des Moines Avenue, approximately a quarter mile from the Mississippi River, since 1937. The first backhoes rolled off the assembly line at the Burlington plant in 1967, which is now the only plant in the United States that produces the Case Loader/Backhoe, giving Burlington the nickname "Backhoe Capital of the World." Case is now a division of the Italian holding group Fiat. Employment at Case peaked in the 1980s, according to the Des Moines Register, then declined after "Case initiated a wave of buyouts and early retirements in the 1990s and early 2000s, and ended the contract with the union in 2004"; but in May 2010, the Register reports, Case announced that "it will open a new line that builds corn-picker heads for combines, as early as " and that by mid-2013 it will add more than 200 positions.
Over the last several years, several businesses have either left the area, or have relocated elsewhere, these business include Exide, makers of vehicle batteries, CAT Case Corporation's closest competitor in American made construction equipment manufacturing, and Lehigh-Leopold, makers of office furniture, this has left some former manufacturing plants around the city empty, but other businesses have moved into them, PPG, makers of auto safety glass have moved into the former CAT plant, and a warehouse has moved into the former Leopold building. In March 2012, the Des Moines Register reported that "Unemployment here is 7.6 percent, compared with the 5.4 percent state average".
Read more about this topic: Burlington, Iowa
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)