Kansas City Bolt and Nut Company plant

Last updated

Kansas City Bolt and Nut Company was a diverse steel parts manufacturing plant in Kansas City, Missouri that through its successors at its peak in the 1950s employed more than 4,500 people.

The plant started in 1888. In 1925 it was acquired by Sheffield Steel Corporation with its variety of products and was billed as a department store of the steel industry with a more diversified line of products than any mill in the country." [1] [2] It was located near the confluence of the Missouri River and Blue River (Missouri) in Kansas City's Northeast Industrial District. The company was the first manufacturer to go into the district and within 10 years 30 other manufacturers followed it with the enclaves adopting the English industrial town names of Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester as levees were built to protect it. [3]

It was acquired by Armco Steel in 1930 which expanded it in 1945. At its peak it was one of Kansas City's largest employers with more than 4,500 employees. [4] Operating as Armco Worldwide Grinding System, it was sold in 1993 to GS Technologies which then became GST Steel Company. In 1997 the plant had a 10-week strike. [5] It closed in February 2001 with the layoff of 750 employees. [6] [7]

The closing of the company (plant) drew considerable attention in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election because of scrutiny of the business dealings of Mitt Romney who had founded Bain Capital which had acquired controlling interest of GST Steel in 1993 for $24.5 million.

Romney had left Bain in 1999 before the bankruptcy. Employees noted that Bain had loaded the company with debt while earning profits ($58.4 million). [5] At the time of its bankruptcy it said it owed $553.9 million in debts against $395.2 million in assets. [5] In 2002 it was revealed the company had underfunded the pension for employees by $44 million. [4] GS Steel derives its name from Georgetown Steel which operates a steel plant in Georgetown, South Carolina. The South Carolina and Missouri operations were combined by Bain. [7] The South Carolina plant closed in 2003. That plant reopened in 2003 with a different owner (International Steel Group) later Mittal Steel and later ArcelorMittal. [8] During the 2012 U.S. Presidential election laid off plant worker Joe Soptic was featured in an advertisement against Romney claiming that his wife died of cancer after he lost his health insurance in the closing. The ad stated "When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my healthcare, and my family lost their healthcare. And a short time after that my wife became ill." An investigation by The Washington Post showed that Soptic's wife had died of cancer in 2006 five years after the plant closed and that she had her own health insurance at the time of the closing but lost it after she left that job in 2002. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgetown, South Carolina</span> City in South Carolina, United States

Georgetown is the third oldest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina and the county seat of Georgetown County, in the Lowcountry. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 9,163. Located on Winyah Bay at the confluence of the Black, Great Pee Dee, Waccamaw, and Sampit rivers, Georgetown is the second largest seaport in South Carolina, handling over 960,000 tons of materials a year, while Charleston is the largest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitt Romney</span> American politician and businessman (born 1947)

Willard Mitt Romney is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Utah since 2019. He previously served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 election, losing to Barack Obama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owens Corning</span> American manufacturer of building materials

Owens Corning is an American company that develops and produces insulation, roofing, and fiberglass composites and related materials and products. It is the world's largest manufacturer of fiberglass composites. It was formed in 1935 as a partnership between two major American glassworks, Corning Glass Works and Owens-Illinois. The company employs approximately 19,000 people around the world. Owens Corning has been a Fortune 500 company every year since the list was created in 1955. The Pink Panther acts as the company's mascot and appears in most of their advertisements.

The McClatchy Company, commonly referred to as simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law and based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states and has an average weekday circulation of 1.6 million and Sunday circulation of 2.4 million. In 2006, it purchased Knight Ridder, which at the time was the second-largest newspaper company in the United States. In addition to its daily newspapers, McClatchy also operates several websites and community papers, as well as a news agency, McClatchy DC Bureau, focused on political news from Washington, D.C.

Bain Capital is an American private investment firm based in Boston. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry sectors and geographic regions. As of 2022, the firm managed approximately $160 billion of investor capital. The firm was founded in 1984 by partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company. The company is headquartered at 200 Clarendon Street in Boston with 22 offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Accuride Corporation is a diversified manufacturer and supplier of commercial vehicle components in North America. Based in Livonia, Michigan, the company designs, manufactures and markets commercial vehicle components.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AK Steel Holding</span> American company

AK Steel Holdings Corporation was a steelmaking company headquartered in West Chester Township, Butler County, Ohio. The company, whose name was derived from the initials of Armco, its predecessor company, and Kawasaki Steel Corporation, was acquired by Cleveland-Cliffs in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ArcelorMittal</span> Luxembourgish multinational steel manufacturing corporation

ArcelorMittal S.A. is a Luxembourgish multinational steel manufacturing corporation headquartered in Luxembourg City. It was formed in 2006 from the takeover and merger of Arcelor by Indian-owned Mittal Steel. ArcelorMittal is the second largest steel producer in the world, with an annual crude steel production of 88 million metric tonnes as of 2022. It is ranked 197th in the 2022 Fortune Global 500 ranking of the world's largest corporations. It employs directly and indirectly 200,000 people and its market capital is $25 billion. The total value of company assets is estimated to be around $100 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TA Associates</span> American private equity firm

TA Associates, founded in 1968, is one of the early modern-era private equity firms in the United States. The firm leads buyouts and minority recapitalizations of profitable growth companies. TA invests across five industry groups: technology, healthcare, consumer products, financial services and business services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitt Romney 2008 presidential campaign</span>

The Mitt Romney presidential campaign of 2008 began on January 3, 2007, two days before Mitt Romney left office as governor of Massachusetts, when he filed to form an exploratory committee with the Federal Election Commission to run for President of the United States as a Republican in the 2008 election. Subsequently, on February 13, 2007, he formally announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. He did so at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, as an emblem of American ingenuity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WireCo WorldGroup</span> American corporation

WireCo WorldGroup is a privately owned company that claims to be the world's largest manufacturer of wire rope.

Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and non-profit organizations. One of the Big Three management consultancies, Bain & Company was founded in 1973 by former Group Vice President of Boston Consulting Group Bill Bain and his colleagues, including Patrick F. Graham. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the firm grew rapidly. Bill Bain later spun off the alternative investment business into Bain Capital in 1984 and appointed Mitt Romney as its first CEO. Bain experienced several setbacks and financial troubles from 1987 to the early 1990s. Romney and Orit Gadiesh are credited with returning the firm to profitability and growth in their sequential roles as the firm's CEO and chairman respectively.

Hogan Preparatory Academy is a charter school at 1221 East Meyer Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri. Although a public school it is not part of the Kansas City, Missouri School District since it is a charter school. As of March 2022 it had an enrollment of 450 making it the 176th largest high school in Missouri. It has 17 teachers. The school in March 2022 had an enrollment that was 97.6 percent African American. The school colors are Orange, Grey and Maroon. and the mascot is the Ram.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign</span> Presidential campaign

The 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney officially began on June 2, 2011, when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney formally announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States, at an event in Stratham, New Hampshire. Having previously run in the 2008 Republican primaries, this was Romney's second campaign for the presidency.

Restore Our Future is a political action committee (PAC) created to support Mitt Romney in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election. A so-called Super PAC, Restore Our Future is permitted to raise and spend unlimited amounts of corporate, union, and individual campaign contributions under the terms of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freedom, Inc.</span>

Freedom, Inc. or Freedom, Incorporated of Kansas City Missouri is a political organization founded in 1961 by five African-American political activists, Bruce Watkins, Howard Maupin, Charles Moore, Fred Curls, Leon Jordan. This was crucial to desegregation of Kansas City Missouri public facilities, the election of many black Missouri State Representatives since 1963, the "strong" candidacy of Bruce R. Watkins for Mayor of Kansas City in 1978-79, the 1982 election of Alan Wheat, the first black Congressman to represent a majority-white district in the Greater Kansas City Missouri Metropolitan Area, the 1991 election of Emmanuel Cleaver as the first black mayor of Kansas City, and—according to new information reported on KKFI on February 18, 2012 during an on-air interview of filmmaker Emiel Cleaver, possibly a blueprint responsible for elections of "First Black Mayors" in New Orleans, Louisiana and other major U.S. cities. The organization was reportedly the brainchild of Leon M. Jordan and Bruce R. Watkins, who were elected its first chairman and co-chairman, respectively.

Priorities USA Action is a progressive political action committee and is the largest Democratic Party super PAC. Founded in 2011, it supported Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. It was the primary super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. It focused mainly on high-dollar donors. As of September 2016, it had amassed $132 million in support of Clinton. The top six donors to the super PAC have given $43.5 million, which is a third of the money collected by Priorities USA Action in the 2016 election cycle. The super PAC raised $21.7 million in August 2016, marking its largest monthly fundraising haul.

The business career of Mitt Romney began shortly after he finished graduate school in 1975. At that time, Romney entered the management consulting industry, and in 1977 secured a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as its chief executive officer, he helped bring the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. The fortune he earned from his business career is estimated at $190–250 million.

Ralph Leroy Nafziger was the founder of the Interstate Bakeries Corporation, which eventually became Hostess Brands.

References

  1. ↑ "Missouri Valley Special Collections: Item Viewer". Kchistory.org. 1925-11-03. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
  2. ↑ "Missouri Valley Special Collections: Item Viewer". Kchistory.org. 1947-09-01. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
  3. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-29. Retrieved 2012-02-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. 1 2 Helling, Dave (2012-01-06). "Bain Capital tied to bankruptcy, closing of KC steel plant". KansasCity.com. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
  5. 1 2 3 David Wren. "Romney's Bain made millions as S.C. steelmaker went bankrupt". KansasCity.com. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
  6. ↑ "Missouri Valley Special Collections : Item Viewer". Kchistory.org. 2001-02-08. Archived from the original on 2013-01-16. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
  7. 1 2 Sullivan, Andy (2012-01-06). "Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet". Reuters. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
  8. ↑ "Georgetown Steel worker talks about Bain Capital, working conditions | Georgetown, South Carolina | Georgetown Times". Gtowntimes.com. Archived from the original on 2012-01-30. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
  9. ↑ Kessler, Glenn (2012-08-08). "New anti-Romney ad: same steelworker, tougher message (revised)". The Washington Post.

Coordinates: 39°6′14.65″N94°29′56.07″W / 39.1040694°N 94.4989083°W / 39.1040694; -94.4989083

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.