Thread Number: 88844  /  Tag: Vintage Dryers
RCA-Whirlpool?
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Post# 1134138   11/21/2021 at 14:09 (879 days old) by moparwash (Pittsburgh,PA )        

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I've always wondered about them, any differences between the plain 'Whirlpools' that preceded and superseded them, or just a marketing thing? anyone have any 'RCA-Whirlpools' out there to post pics?




Post# 1134139 , Reply# 1   11/21/2021 at 14:22 (879 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        

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Why was it that in the 1990s there were some obvious GE built appliances that had an RCA label on them?


Post# 1134143 , Reply# 2   11/21/2021 at 15:24 (879 days old) by CircleW (NE Cincinnati OH area)        
Complex story

In 1955 Whirlpool bought several other companies. One of them was the Estate Range Co. of Hamilton, OH, which was a division of RCA. As part of the agreement, Whirlpool got the right to use the RCA trademark on their entire line of appliances for a period of  about ten years. Whirlpool closed the Estate Range factory in 1961, and Whirlpool ranges were made by Roper at their Newark OH plant for several years. Other companies they acquired in 1955 were Seeger Refrigerator Co., and Birtman Electric Co. As with anything concerning Whirlpool, Sears was involved.

 

Now to answer Keith's question. RCA and General Electric have a relationship going back about a century. RCA was partially owned by GE, Westinghouse, and AT&T, and affiliated with NBC and RKO Radio Pictures, in its early days. In the early 1930's, it became an independent company, but in 1986, GE repurchased the company. Around thst time, they decided to add an RCA appliance line to their existing GE and Hotpoint brands.


Post# 1134144 , Reply# 3   11/21/2021 at 15:28 (879 days old) by DADoES (TX, U.S. of A.)        

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RCA Whirlpool was a marketing/name partnership between RCA and Whirlpool.  Didn't involve any mechanical change other than the labeling.

GE had hands in RCA radio products from 1919 to 1930.  GE owned RCA again for one year-ish, 1986 to 1987.


Post# 1134145 , Reply# 4   11/21/2021 at 15:38 (879 days old) by Cam2s (Nebraska)        

Is that where Whirlpool got the Estate name that they would use later on for their BOL line?


Post# 1134147 , Reply# 5   11/21/2021 at 15:55 (879 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        

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The years with Jack Welch at the helm were certainly dynamic and how quick GE seem to start a descent after he left.

 

Yes, after Whirlpool bought out Estate Stove they could do what they want with the name.  Companies will often repurpose names for a new, but related, product line.


Post# 1134400 , Reply# 6   11/24/2021 at 13:09 (877 days old) by Yogitunes (New Jersey)        

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probably a big deal back then of promoting that RCA and Whirlpool were linked.....where a lot of times you get brand loyalty from consumers....

as in the 1958 RCA Whirlpool Imperial Mark XII washer and matching dryer with
Revolutionary New Automatic Fabric Control....available in decorator colors....Better Home Appliances....for Better Homes...


takes you back to the 70's commercials, while others were just a mere microwave....if it doesn't say AMANA, its not a Radarange!...


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Post# 1134404 , Reply# 7   11/24/2021 at 14:46 (876 days old) by reactor (Oak Ridge, Tennessee-- )        
GE and Neutron Jack

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General electric's decline started when Jack WAS at GE. Anyone can make the books look good by selling off divisions and infusing money cash into the company. But the destruction doesn't become self-evident immediately.

Pretend you have a house built upon a foundation of valuable marble blocks. You decide to sell the marble blocks....block by block to get cash. All of sudden you have hefty bank account and you appear to be wealthy and successful.

You take some of the money from the selling of the foundation and you dress up the house with new paint, shutters and other fancies. Everyone oohs and ahs at you saying what a smart person. He is loaded with money and his house stands out over everyone else's.

With each block you pull out, the foundation upon which your house is built gets weaker and weaker. It is not evident right away, but over time visible cracks appear....then the walls start tumbling down.

Welch was smart, he got out of the house at just the right time before the cracks appeared. This way he could blame his successors on their mismanagement of the GE.

In reality, Jack is the one who destroyed GE's by divesting the very core industries that made General Electric. Now GE's very foundation is gone, the company has fallen down. The current CEO is trying to pick up the remnants and do what he can with them.

With those remnants, GE is now splitting up into three companies in an effort to survive its death throes. Only one of the three companies remaining will be "General Electric" and that is the jet engines/aviation division.. . The GE we all knew is now gone with the wind.


Post# 1134406 , Reply# 8   11/24/2021 at 15:05 (876 days old) by moparwash (Pittsburgh,PA )        

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GE just ran the same playbook that Westinghouse used to destroy itself...sell off everything over time to the point of not being to stand on its own (and buy CBS)

Post# 1134408 , Reply# 9   11/24/2021 at 15:11 (876 days old) by Maytag85 (Sean A806)        

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To be honest, GE wasn’t really that innovative even if they touted their innovations in their appliances and they knew Whirlpool was outselling their appliances in large numbers since they had a contract with Sears along with Whirlpool’s aggressive marketing such as the films Mother Takes A Holiday from 1952 and The Wonderful World Of Wash N Wear from 1958 and a few other commercials and adds from that era.

One area Whirlpool was ahead in compared to GE was offering gas and electric appliances while GE only offered electric appliances and touted Living Better Electrically was more affordable but didn’t once mention what the cost of electric bills would be. Whirlpool/Sears definitely filled in that niche real quick since again they offered gas and electric appliances since they knew each home had different needs, etc.


Post# 1134413 , Reply# 10   11/24/2021 at 15:54 (876 days old) by DADoES (TX, U.S. of A.)        

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The "Revolutionary New Automatic Fabric Control" was a color-coded guide for setting the knobs.  Roll the selector wheel to the type of load, then match the color of the choice to the same color on the wash temp, rinse temp, and agitation speed switches*, and the cycle on the timer.  Spin speed was controlled by the timer per the selected cycle.  It wasn't yet a programmed system like a pushbutton Mark XII or Lady Kenmore.

*A bit of service document I have says that there are six selections on the agitation speed control but only high and low speeds ... three low selections and three high selections, each coded a different color to match the choices on the fabric selector wheel.


Post# 1134429 , Reply# 11   11/24/2021 at 17:36 (876 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        
#7 picking on Jack W.

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It's always tempting to want to find SOMEONE who's a scapegoat we can blame when things change from what we know.

Jack W. was just doing as other companies did before his reign and as some companies are still doing today. Roger Smith at GM in the 80s, Eddie Lambert with Sears recently, even Mitten's Romney with all the companies he was part of that no longer exist or are significantly different than they once were.

Yes a company like GE's home appliance division, IBM, or Motorola were fun places to work when a new market is launched and it's a success. It's all companies like that can do to fulfill customer demand. Look at Tesla today. Just completing the H-U-G-E Gigafactory in Austin only started in July 2020. They can't build the new models fast enough. GM, F, and FCAU will be lucky if they still exist in 5 years as they're desperately scrambling with their pathetic line-up of vehicles.

When a company has maxed out it's sales and the markets' saturated, it's not as much fun is it? That's when serious decisions need to be made as these huge companies aren't here for memorabilia's sake. I kind of wish they were but ...doesn't work that way. People who've done the research will know how to maximize income from the remaining assets and that's when the public gets antsy. Seeing KB toys, Sears, Kmart, RadioSchack and other companies we once knew thrown on the scrap heap is almost personal.

But it's really not.


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Post# 1134450 , Reply# 12   11/24/2021 at 19:01 (876 days old) by reactor (Oak Ridge, Tennessee-- )        
Holding Jack resonsible for his actions....

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Jack Welsh is 100 percent responsible for the demise of GE. The divisions he sold, GE HVAC, GE Small Appliances, Elano Products (supplied stainless tubing for GE Locomotives0 and eventually GE Plastics to name just a few, were all successful, and all profitable.

Jack Welsh publicly stated his goal was to get GE "out of manufacturing" and make it a "service" company. That is why he sold divisions to get the money to buy his financial service and insurance companies.

GE Finance was his obsession and put most of his efforts into it. Never mind the fact that GE's infrastructure and experience for over a hundred years had been electrical manufacturing.

That is why he ordered the words "General Electric" to be taken off of most of GE's products with only the logo "GE" to appear....to disassociate GE with electricity and electrical products in the public's eye. He dictated the corporate name be changed from "General Electric" to "The GE Company."

His reason for the division he first sold, HVAC, as he told in his autobiography was, "I didn't like HVAC." GE held the lion's share of residential HVAC and a very large percentage of the commercial HVAC market as well.

No Jack did not use analysis teams to decide when and which divisions were to be sold off. Jack would never stood to to others advice He did did what he wanted. He wanted cash to purchase banks and insurance companies. The first thing he did upon purchasing RCA, was to terminate it as a company and sell off it's individual components. Then he licensed out the RCA name to anyone who wanted to pay to use it. At that time he purchased NBC/Universal and GE became the operator of the Universal Theme Park in Orlando Florida. The creator and builder of nuclear reactors, jet engines and steam power turbines was now running roller coasters at an amusement park.

No Welsh, was a man who was trying to make a company into his own image. He grew up as a boy who was picked-on because of his severe stuttering and his small physical stature. Many of those who worked under him described his as having "short man's syndrome." An intense drive to build his ego.

If someone disagreed with Jack, he would often get enraged. After the yelling, if his raged continued to build, he reverted back to his childhood stuttering and had to force out each word one by one.

If you, as an underling, provoked this rage in Jack, the next day you often found GE Security guards at your side as you emptied your desk, and then escorted you out the front door.

Don't attribute any sense of loyalty for GE to Jack. He was there to make a company in his own image and show other CEO's he was a force to be reckoned with. He wanted to prove he was in the big leagues too.

He even changed the GE logo, in the early nineties, to the italicized block letter GE logo you saw on top of the GE corporate tower. I am sure that built his ego even more, now that he got rid of 100 year old logo and replaced it by one that Jack personally made himself.

Public outcry at the loss of the beloved 100+ year old GE logo forced Welsh, in one of his extremely rare reversals, to reinstated the old GE logo. He refused to take it off the GE Tower, though. No doubt each night he looked up at his electrically lit, self-designed giant GE logo lighting the sky and his ego burst with pride.

I tell you the personal things about Welsh so you can understand his behavior and most of all, his motivations.

GE was a rock solid company. It could weather virtually any storm. Even during the Great Depression, GE was one of the only companies to continue to pay dividends.

It had short cycle profit industries such as small appliances. Profits were smaller, but the time from production to profits was measured in days and weeks. Even in times of economic hardships there are weddings, birthdays, Christmas and people buy gifts as well as appliances for their home use.

Even in times of economic crisis people have to heat their homes (GE HVAC), they have to eat (GE stoves, GE refrigerators), they still have dirty clothes (GE washers, dryers, irons)

GE locomotives and power generation were long cycle profit divisions. Profits cycles times may run months to years, but they brought in huge profits. Even in times of economic downturn, the U.S> still needs electricity, we still needed X-ray units, we still needed aircraft engines, and train engines. People still get sick and people still need transportation regardless of the economy. GE had them covered both ways.
Ge's short cycle profit industries leveled out the profit curve in between the arrival of the profits for the GE long cycle industries. A perfect balance. Jack took away those industries.

GE built generators and they built appliances and industrial equipment to utilize the power that they themselves created. How many companies create a demand for their own product? GE did and it served them well for over 100 years.

GE could weather any storm, and did. Until Jack Welsh destroyed GE. When you cut off too many limbs, a tree will die. Jack Welsh cut off most of GE's manufacturing limbs and tried to graft onto the GE tree, banking and insurance limbs.

You can't graft apple tree limbs onto a Magnolia tree. You can't rebuild a company from the ground up and destroy all its present infrastructure and over 100 years of operating expertise.

No, I am no picking on Jack Welsh. I am holding his responsible for his actions. Whether I or anyone else has sentimental value for GE is an irrelevant point.

GE is dying and Jack Welsh is the cause. GE weathered every storm, WWI, WWII, the Great Depression, but the one thing it couldn't weather was Jack Welsh. The man who destroyed it from the inside out.




This post was last edited 11/24/2021 at 19:35
Post# 1134454 , Reply# 13   11/24/2021 at 19:27 (876 days old) by CircleW (NE Cincinnati OH area)        

I believe Barry to be correct concerning the downfall of GE.


Post# 1134456 , Reply# 14   11/24/2021 at 19:44 (876 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)        
GE Would Be In The Same Place Today

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Even if Jack Welsh was never employed there,

 

In fact the Major appliance should have been sold 10 years earlier when it was still worth more.

 

John L.


Post# 1134457 , Reply# 15   11/24/2021 at 20:06 (876 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        
Interesting

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Barry you write as though you either worked for GE, or you have some other personal interest in the pre-1980 GE whereas you can speak for the changes that happened over the decades. Are you stating what was in Jack's book?

I don't have anything for or against Jack Welch. GE has always been a big name and when my parents had their commercial electric business, they frequently sold GE bulbs, ballasts, and fixtures. In the early years they sold GE christmas lights. My parents even received GE stock as an incentive.

Either way, it's been found that many people who elevate themselves to the point of CEO have certain mental traits that would easily get them under the care of a psych ward, and no doubt there have been a number of corporate workers who've found themselves involuntarily detained when their actions were upsetting enough.

As anyone who's been alive for a while should know, it takes a quite a bit to steer the ships that are our lives. To steer the ships of a company takes even more, and to steer and perhaps redesign the largest of vessels truly takes a dedication. I've learned a lot of respect for those who make the wheels of society churn so smoothly. When they make it look easy, it's deceptive.

As much as the media loves drama, no doubt we only hear a small fraction of the dramatics that go on in numerous businesses. Some are privately owned and we can only guess. Even those that are publicly owned have closed doors to the media.

Jack did take a $417 Million severance package when he left in 2001. The largest in history. Think what you will. That seems excessive imo.

I avoid getting involved in the dramatics of corporate culture because it's crazy in there. LOL. Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind. Scary. Filled with people who need to prove themselves to .....someone. Maybe just themselves.


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Post# 1134458 , Reply# 16   11/24/2021 at 20:10 (876 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        

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"In fact the Major appliance should have been sold 10 years earlier when it was still worth more."

Yeah, If Jack was bad, the management that followed in the 00s was horrible. It was like a child playing in a china shop.


Post# 1134463 , Reply# 17   11/24/2021 at 21:59 (876 days old) by reactor (Oak Ridge, Tennessee-- )        
bad management

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Agreed. Jack Welsh hand picked Jeff Immelt, his successor. Jack's agreement with Immelt was that he would recommend him for the CEO position if he would continue to follow his transition of GE into a financial service company.

Immelt continued the sell off of GE's division, slowly snipping off the remainder of GE's life giving limbs. By the time Immelt was removed, it was too late. The inertia of GE's downward spiral to destruction was irreversible. No successor CEO could put on the brakes.

So sad that one of the greatest companies in the U.S. history fell at the hands of one little man and his very big ego.




This post was last edited 11/24/2021 at 22:21
Post# 1134470 , Reply# 18   11/24/2021 at 23:47 (876 days old) by neptunebob (Pittsburgh, PA)        
About 3 parts of GE

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Barry, don't you think now the GE and General Electric name should be on its electric power division? There is nothing electric about a jet engine.

About the logo, I read that back in 1968 a lot of RCA dealers were upset about the change to the block letters they use now from the old RCA logo in the circle. People had known that symbol for nearly 100 years and it was going to be replaced because the RCA top brass thought the new logo was more "hip"


Post# 1134473 , Reply# 19   11/24/2021 at 23:56 (876 days old) by reactor (Oak Ridge, Tennessee-- )        
GE

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I agree with you, Bob. The General Electric name would be very appropriate for their energy company they are spinning off. After all electricity generation was how GE got started. I guess that's too logical, though, ha.

Post# 1134474 , Reply# 20   11/24/2021 at 23:58 (876 days old) by neptunebob (Pittsburgh, PA)        
I have been watching videos on You Tube about Narcissists...

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And Jack Welsh must have been a Narcissist in a very severe way. But the board of directors must have liked him or he would not be there. Why did they hire him?

Post# 1134476 , Reply# 21   11/25/2021 at 00:03 (876 days old) by tolivac (greenville nc)        

"jet" engines become electric when they turn a generator.What happens to most of those "jet" engines---gas turbines-when they have had too many hours put on them in aviation use??They power gnerators,natural gas pumping stations,and large water pump systems.On the airplane the engine turned a propulsion fan-the fan speed is just about where an electric generator runs at.

Post# 1134477 , Reply# 22   11/25/2021 at 00:03 (876 days old) by Maytag85 (Sean A806)        
Reply #18

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A lot of logos changed in 1968 and 1969 since companies wanted something simple but yet stood out from the competition and one of these logos that might be recognizable is the AT&T/Bell System logo used from 1969 to 1984. Saul Bass is the one who designed this along with a few other corporate logos and graphic design a few of which are still being used to this day and heck if AT&T were still to use their 1969 logo, it would still look fairly modern despite it being from 52 years ago.

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Post# 1134479 , Reply# 23   11/25/2021 at 00:19 (876 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        
HOW do you know this?

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Barry, I've asked this before, how do you purport to know these things?

For example:
"Jack Welsh hand picked Jeff Immelt, his successor. Jack's agreement with Immelt was that he would recommend him for the CEO position if he would continue to follow his transition of GE into a financial service company"



Post# 1134480 , Reply# 24   11/25/2021 at 00:24 (876 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        
Bell Network

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Fond memories perhaps?

It's interesting how most of New England and what is now the Rust belt have state specific networks but then it's like the country spread south and west and it just kind of all became jumbled together.

... but that's not how the country grew.


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Post# 1134519 , Reply# 25   11/25/2021 at 11:33 (876 days old) by CircleW (NE Cincinnati OH area)        
Bell System

Actually, South Central Bell didn't exist until July,1968, as those areas were part of Southern Bell Telephone. My mom worked for Southern Bell in Hattiesburg, MS as an operator during WWII, and in the same building in the early 50's while working  for Western Electric.

 

Cincinnati Bell serves the areas immediately west and south of where I live. They never were completely owned by AT&T, unlike most of the other parts of the Bell System.


Post# 1134520 , Reply# 26   11/25/2021 at 11:36 (876 days old) by reactor (Oak Ridge, Tennessee-- )        
and more about GE

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First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

There are probably more pleasant things to talk about on Thanksgiving than the demise of one of the most iconic of all U.S> Corporations. Yet it si good to talk about as we learn from the past, so we don't make the same mistakes in the future.

About the Board of Directors. From what I hear, most were hear, most were afraid of Jack Welsh. CEO's can get rid of Board remembers. And one of Jack's methodologies to put people in line was to verbally abuse GE employees in front of their peers if they disagreed with him. So it seems that many of the Board members were little more than sycophants.

As a stockholder, I got the GE annual Report each year. It was hard to stomach as you opened it and there was a full page picture of Jack and his sycophants. Some even dressed like him. No doubt that pleased Jack very much. I

Bradfordwhite--you mentioned Jack's book and did I get my information from it. It is hard to get information from it as it was 300 pages of self-promotion/self-gratification.

Oddly, Jack was honest about one thing, indicating he was not a very good engineer. When he was a chemical engineer at GE Plastics (where he got started at General Electric) he made a mistake that caused a major explosion at one of the polymer plants, that caused significant damage to the plant. Seems he was as bad at engineering as he was at being a CEO.

Jack went directly from college to an engineer at GE, then to the divisions chief of GE Plastics, to CEO. He had no other managerial experience. From running one division to running an entire corporation with international holdings is quite a jump with no experience in between.

Other literature states that GE's administration took notice of Jack, while he was in plastics due to his "aggressiveness" and they liked that. Not aggressive in research or new products, but aggressive in sales growth. They got the "aggressive" attribute right. Aggressive to the point where he destroyed GE.

There is an abundance of literature on GE and its transition out there, Bradfordwhite, if you would like to avail yourself to it. It was a public traded company. One of the better works, not told from Jack's perspective, is "At Any Cost: Jack Welsh, General Electric and the Pursuit of Profit." by Thomas O'Boyle

There are a plethora of other publications in trade magazines as well as consumer periodicals.

It lays bare what went on behind the scenes at GE with information from memos, personal accounts and legal documents.

Just one of the many famous Welsh tyrannical ragein thes occurred between Welsh and the division chief at GE Appliances at Appliance Park.. You may recall nineties when GE had just developed at new in-house rotary compressor for its refrigerators. Once in the refrigerators and out into the market they then started dying..... by the millions.

What happened was When they compressor was first developed, GE Appliances was running it through it involved and comprehensive durability tests. These take time, often years. Jack wanted them on the market...now. He got in his usual tyrannical rage with the division chief at Appliance Park and was told him to get the in compressors out in the market NOW. If he didn't he would be replaced by someone who would. So the compressors went out into the market, they failed, and it it cost GE millions in recalls/repairs.

So what happened, you guessed it, the new compressors design was scrapped instead of revamped and GE compressors began being imported from China.

I worked with General Electric for over thirty years. Not for GE, but WITH GE. at the time, I was Asst. Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department at Wright State University and we had a co-op program for out students with GE. We sent our students to several GE division, but most went to GE Aviation in Evandale, Ohio (just outside of Cincinnati) and Appliance Park (GE Appliances) in Louisville, KY. because of their geographic proximity to the University.

I became friends with many of the GE reps who came to the University. Sometimes we would go out to lunch. It is surprising what you can learn from inside sources over thirty years. Some were more guarded in their responses about what was happening internally at GE, others were so disgusted that they told everything they knew.

I a case like this, if you hear one thing from one person, you learn to take it with a grain of salt. When you hear it from different reps from different divisions you take it more seriously. When you hear it from multiple reps and its in agreement with current literature you give it credence.

One thing they all agreed on, at least the ones I met, was Welsh was bad for GE. Some predicted he would run GE into the ground. Turns out these were the ones who were right.

The viewpoint of stockholders and employees is often quite divergent. You make money and the stockholders are willing to turn their heads aside to what is happening internally. Money talks and Welsh was putting money into their pockets.

I took the money as all stockholders did, but I didn't turn my head to what was happening. Wanting to know what was going on and I researched it, being piqued by the information I was getting from those who worked under Welsh during his regime. Beside talking to people wo were internal to GE I read everything I could get my hands on. When I see an injustice I attempt to do something about it. But, in this case, there was little I could do except try to make changes through my votes and try to educate others about what was happening a GE as it was being torn apart limb by limb by Welsh.

Of all the GE employees/reps I talked to at the University during the Welsh years, No one, not one single person liked Welsh or had a good thing to say about him despite the fact that GE was making money and stocks were climbing. They were viewing it from different eyes and different perspectives than the world, and they saw what was happing internally.

It all boils down to what is a corporation for.

To answer that, we have to go back to the origins of the company. I think many companies started with someone who had a passion. An idea...a goal that drove them. They pursued it. Whether it be a product/invention a service, etc. Their passion and drive led them to start a company to produce this product or conduct this service.

They knew if you pleased the customers they would come back, and they would tell others and your company would grow and prosper. Over time, the idea of the corporation developed. This allowed people share and participate in the growth of a company.

The stockholders provided a means to have finances grow, to reach more consumers, and continue to research for new and better products. It was all about pleasing the consumer. As the company prospered the stockholders were rewarded for their monetary loans to the company.

Somewhere along the line, it seems them emphasis switch from pleasing the customer to pleasing the stockholders and the goal of companies was to be an entity to make money. Dong what you have to do, even if it means giving up what the company was created for.

That is it became a game where you buy and sell other companies to get more profits, whether these companies are related to the original vision of the company and its founder, or not.

Jack Welsh made it abundantly clear what he thought a corporation was for. A gigantic toy that he could use to get fame for himself and show the world he was a force to be reckoned with. Little Jack was now able to play with the big boys and he did whatever was needed to aggressively destroy the internal electrical infrastructure of GE, which he so hated, so he could rebuild it in his own image.

He envisioned GE as a giant financial service empire, with he at the helm. Basically he was attempting to converting General Electric to a bank and insurance company. Despite Welsh's and Immelt's attempts it didn't take. (Although Immelt at the very end showed some minor signs of wanting to get GE back into industry as its prime focus..but it was too late.)

It's not sentimental to realize that 100 years of experience being an electrical manufacturer and billions of dollars of electrical manufacturing infrastructure is not designed to be turned into a financial institution.

But Jack's drive for recognition and power drove him to ignore these things. With every division he sold, it pumped money into the corporation, stocks went up and Jack looked good. He beamed with pride and his ego swelled. Selling off Ge divisions right and left, he had play money in his pockets now and he purchased his financial institutions and insurance companies, no doubt just knowing that GE would one day be the Welsh Financial Services Corporation.

All House of Cards look nice and get praise, until they begin to fall. Once the fall begins, no power on earth can stop it. For there is no foundation there, no support. Welsh destroyed GE's foundation decades ago.


How ironic, though, that as the CEO, board members and managers try to sift through the rubble, all that what they are able to salvage from Welsh's ego trip are just three entities: aviation, electricity generation/energy and hospital/health care equipment.

All manufacturing, and all electrical related, and all the very things that Welsh despised and spent his career trying to destroy or get rid of.

Nevertheless, money holds a prominent value in our society and people would rather think praise of a man who temporarily enriched the pockets of stockholders than look at the reality of a man whose ego and drive for control set one of our country's largest and oldest companies into a death spiral from which it never returned.

Welsh is gone now, and so is GE.






Post# 1134596 , Reply# 27   11/26/2021 at 09:48 (875 days old) by kenwashesmonday (Carlstadt, NJ)        

Jack Welch single-handedly destroyed GE's appliance division. What he did may have looked good on paper, but he basically turned GE into a banking company with no physical substance.

They called him "neutron Jack" because, like a neutron bomb, he left buildings standing, but did away with the people that had worked in them. I was working for GE in 1981, and witnessed the affects of his bombs. In short, he was a rat.


Post# 1134634 , Reply# 28   11/26/2021 at 17:35 (874 days old) by jamiel (Detroit, Michigan and Palm Springs, CA)        

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Concur--was there from 1989-1992 at GE Capital...we were relatively "golden" at the time as we were pioneering some interesting team-based operations at Montgomery Ward Credit (our workgroup got sent to Crotonville several times though I never participated). The problem was they took what was a reasonably associated business (consumer financing of major appliances) and extended it beyond all reason (jewelry/furniture consumer financing, then factoring, then being the $$ behind Montgomery Ward (essentially GE bought all of Montgomery Ward's sales every night, at a discount, from them, from a small office in Las Vegas, NV providing liquidity to them....) then to other types of finance, creating an entire business out of derivatives and shi$$ and we see where they are now.

Post# 1134657 , Reply# 29   11/26/2021 at 19:21 (874 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea))        

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When Westinghouse was about chin deep in brown water they built tract housing in Florida. 

Wasn't a megalomaniacal CEO's idea though, they paid consultants to come up with it.  [rolleyes]

 

The only legacy corporation I can think of that does better now than it did before is Pepsi.  Always #2 in beverages, they now surpass Coke in sales.  They dabbled briefly in restaurant chains (Pizza Bell, Taco Hut) then settled into owning Frito Lay.


Post# 1134674 , Reply# 30   11/26/2021 at 22:12 (874 days old) by neptunebob (Pittsburgh, PA)        
From what I hear, multiple bad managers ruined Westinghouse.

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All that is left is their nuclear power division which I believe may be owned by another company. Outside of Pittsburgh there is an abandoned Westinghouse that may (we hope not) become an Amazon distribution center, something a lot of people here don't want. The WH place was made to be beautiful for the smart people who worked there and it has a lot of nice features we would hate to lose. Click if you are interested.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO neptunebob's LINK


Post# 1134678 , Reply# 31   11/26/2021 at 22:30 (874 days old) by reactor (Oak Ridge, Tennessee-- )        
suds-lock on that link

reactor's profile picture
That link doesn't seem to be working, Bob.

Post# 1134682 , Reply# 32   11/26/2021 at 22:58 (874 days old) by neptunebob (Pittsburgh, PA)        
Let my try again,

neptunebob's profile picture
This may be what we might have to deal with.

Notice that the music in this video sounds like it is made with pee bottles. At 1.30 2 guys run like they are trying to hold it. And at exactly 2 minutes the woman walks like she is wearing Depends.



CLICK HERE TO GO TO neptunebob's LINK


Post# 1134683 , Reply# 33   11/26/2021 at 23:00 (874 days old) by neptunebob (Pittsburgh, PA)        
Try this for the video I refer to.

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Try this link for video.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO neptunebob's LINK



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