Anger flows in the wake of job talks

Last week’s developments in the Mercury Marine saga resembled a scenario that would leave one to wonder who the grown-ups are in the room.

Just as folks in Stillwater were beginning to think they would be getting more jobs at the Mercruiser plant there, they realized early in the week that the Oklahoma jobs may not be totally safe after all.

Within days, the company managed to hang a cloud of uncertainty over its employees in two states. It’s the kind of situation that leaves people on both sides angrier than necessary.

One state legislator even suggested the company has not negotiated in good faith and that no matter how the union voted, Mercury Marine was staying in Fond du Lac, Wis.

He was right. By Friday night the Stillwater workers saw the situation completely reversed. Now Stillwater jobs will be moving to Wisconsin.

The union in Fond du Lac already had voted to reject a wage and benefits package, prompting the company to say it was moving jobs to Stillwater. Imagine all the work the economic development community in that town, and the state for that matter, must have been engaged in to prepare for expansion at the plant.

A second union vote in Fond du Lac occurred past a deadline to decide whether to accept the same benefits deal.

A company executive even went to Stillwater, visited with state and local officials about incentives and the company’s gradual relocation to the town. Yet the company extended the deadline for the union, allowing one more vote.

Mercury Marine comes out of this deal not looking good. In fact, to onlookers, it appears to have played both sides — the union workers in Wisconsin and the nonunion workers in Stillwater.

The whole thing was poorly handled.