General Electric Co.'s plan to sell or divest its Louisville, KY-based appliance business comes as a surprise to locals, from Local 761 union president William T. "Tommy" Spires to Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson. The strategy, first reported in Thursday's
Wall Street Journal (subscription required), would see GE shedding its signature unit, where appliances from the self-cleaning oven to the refrigerator door water dispenser to the
"spacesaver" microwave oven were
invented.
According to Louisville's
Courier-Journal, Abramson has been meeting with GE Consumer & Industrial chief executive Jim Campbell over the past two weeks to discuss possible employee reductions. Those talks, according to an Abramson spokesperson, didn't include a possible sale or divestiture. Abramson went on to tell
WAVE 3 TV that he will work to convince GE or any potential buyer to keep the Louisville unit operating.
Appliance Park, as it's known locally, employs 5,000 and covers more than 900 acres. And while many of GE's best-known brands grew up there or are assembled there, the unit accounted for less than 8% of GE's 2007 revenue. - Suzanne Stevens
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do this mean lafayette georgia plant too.