Koch- Statement from Dave Robertson: The Crisis in Ukraine
The health, safety and wellbeing of all employees is our top priority, including our employees in Ukraine, Russia, and thousands more across Europe at various Koch companies. Since the conflict started, Koch has provided financial assistance to employees and their families from Ukraine and humanitarian aid to those affected in neighboring countries, and we will continue to do so.
Koch company Guardian Industries operates two glass manufacturing facilities in Russia that employ about 600 people. We have no other physical assets in Russia, and outside of Guardian, employ 15 individuals in the country. While Guardian’s business in Russia is a very small part of Koch, we will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them (which is what The Wall Street Journal has reported they would do). Doing so would only put our employees there at greater risk and do more harm than good.
Imagine that! A company that recognizes the difference between a government and the governed!
So in other words, we are keeping our assets and will profit off of them. We say we are doing it for the employees to keep everyone off our backs.
That’s my read. Pity they hadn’t the honesty and courage to say it.
Of course Dave. We all know how well Russian governments run businesses or have you willfully ignored and forgotten the soviet breadlines and empty shelves in your haste to score a quick point against capitalism? There is nothing contradictory with wanting to make a profit and wanting to benefit your employees. Only the ignorant draw such a false dichotomy.
I’m all for capitalism. That’s all that keeps the world going. I think you missed my point that Koch is virtue signaling and they don’t really care about their employees.
Who gives a shit. If I owned a company in Russia the damn company would continue operate. FJB and “the” ukraine.
Or they don’t feel that their employees need to suffer for their governments indiscretions.
We don’t see many virtue signalling western companies boycotting China for concentration camps & organ harvesting but apparently that’s somehow a different kind of evil. China purged millions of it’s citizens during the Cultural Revolution, today it’s one of everyone’s biggest trading partners, Censorship, Social Credits and all.
The rush to sanctions is going to be the end of the petrodollar and our tech oligarchs and their henchmen at the WEF are going to have to scale back their globalist ambitions. You can bet that right now the Saudis are working feverishly on protecting their wealth from Canadian Trucker treatment.
If corporations pulled out of every nation involved in invading other nations, there wouldn’t be many developed nations to choose to set up in. North America would be corporation-free.
If the company did not continue as is, then I strongly suspect some Russian oligarch would have claimed it for no cost.
If that situation had occurred at the oil company I worked for after I finished my B. Sc., only the managers would have been rescued without hesitation.
Everyone else would have been considered to be an unnecessary expense and would have been abandoned unless one paid the company to get them out.
Which reminds me of another situation I dealt with. A few years after the invasion of Iraq, I was offered a contract to work in a certain Middle Eastern country. The ME was still in upheaval and, a few days before the offer was made, there was a major bombing in, I recall, Turkey.
I asked my contact what the company was going to do if things heated up in the area where I was supposed to be working. He was quite evasive and refused to answer my question. That’s when I decided to turn it down. I may have wanted a paycheque at the time, but not in exchange for my personal safety.
@B A DeplorableR
Yes, Western Companies have never had an issue operating in “conflict zones” especially conflict of their making.
Anyone ever heard of Halliburton ceasing operations for any length of time in any war torn country?
Oh wait here they are again…………..
https://fortune.com/2022/03/17/besides-koch-industries-halliburton-and-subway-which-companies-are-still-operating-in-russia-more-than-you-might-think/
I arrived in Saudi the day before the Kuwait invasion lived within sight of the US base that was hit by a SCUD. Interesting times.
Hat off to Koch. They have had the presence of mind to remain private in spite of the fact they the owners could have made billions by going public. “Leave us alone, we know what we are doing and don’t need the additional regulation”. My only beef with the “brothers” is that they are a little too libertarian. Some regulation is necessary in a free market society to set some side rails – but current government has gone well past that.
Koch is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest pusher of wide open,uncaring, unfettered,uncounted,unchecked mass immigration into the United States.
And pushes it for no other reason than to lower wages to the absolute lowest possible in the United States.
If I had the power I would not hesitate ,not for one second to throw everyone in that family,feet first into an industrial plastic shredding machine.
Agree on the immigration issue. Like I said, a little too libertarian.
Watched Different Russia update last night. Valeria & Alex pointed out the Russian answer to McDonalds closing: DyaDya Vanya (Uncle Vanya) which uses the McD logo turned sideways, turning it into a B (Russian alphabet V). Ingenious!
I think I made the point that these international companies shutting down would allow Russian companies to fill the gap. Russia is not going to cease to exist no matter how many fools think it will.