Perdue tours BSH plant, talks about ways to attract industry

Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue toured BSH Home Appliances on Friday, talking with company officials about ways to attract global industry to North Carolina and with employees about community college training that helped them get good jobs.

She was greeted at the door by Clemens Schaller, the executive director of technology, along with Uwe Klossowski, new dishwasher production site manager; Stefan Koss, marketing manager; and Chuck Dale, human resources manager.

Perdue has worked six years with Schaller in groundbreaking work for plant and community college training expansions.

He is leaving to go back to the company's home office in Germany in three weeks.

Perdue checked out the sleek product line in the conference room display and took time both before and after the tour to hear Schaller's suggestions for attracting new global industry to the state.

They included working with other regions on clusters of industries that use products from similar suppliers, a concept that has brought at least three new manufacturers to North Carolina. One of them is Drahtzug Stein, a dishwasher basket manufacturer that announced plans last week to open a factory employing about 100 people in New Bern next spring.

"It's risky for new manufacturers; they are hesitant, to set up new plants serving only one industry," Schaller said. By locating near manufactures with similar raw product demands, they can retool to produce for one when business is slow for another.

BSH manufactures home appliances and began U.S. operations in 1991. It has expanded both here and internationally to become the world's third-largest appliance producer.

BSH began operations in New Bern in 1996 and now employs about 1,100 workers, Schaller said. That is down from a high of 1,406 in 2007 because of production efficiencies and the economic downturn, particularly cuts in new housing starts.

He said the cuts at BSH came mostly through attrition and temporary employees. Even gaining market share over competitors in some lines, however, the company did not make production goals last year and is feeling the economic pinch of a $7 million new product investment in 2008. It now has two shifts working two dishwasher production lines that employ 340 people.

Perdue asked whether the cuts would hurt the program established at Craven Community College to teach skills needed for work at BSH.

"With or without an economic slowdown it is difficult to get qualified people," Schaller said. New skilled workers will still be needed.

Craven County Economic Development Director Jim Davis told Perdue that the company is working with the community college and Col. Dave Smith, commander of the Navy Fleet Readiness Center East, on efficiency program education.

Perdue's walk with company officials took her down a production line where five workers - William McNeely, Kristen Sanner, Amber Jones, Troy Wilson, and Anthony Zymroz - stepped aside to tell her how the community college training worked to help them get the skills they needed.

Sanner has an associate's degree and is going to school and has been able to work as an apprentice throughout her training.

"Tell me, are you happy?" Perdue asked, to which all said they were.

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Perdue says she will stick to pledge to avoid negative campaigning

Bev Perdue said Friday that she will stick to her pledge of avoiding negative campaigning during the final stretch of her run to become North Carolina's first woman governor. She also said she favors the idea of having campaigns financed by a nonprofit endowment.

The latest polls give Perdue a three-point lead in the race.

Perdue served two terms in the N.C. House and one in the state Senate and became the state's first female lieutenant governor following her election in 2000. She was re-elected to a second term in 2004. She faces Republican Pat McCrory and Libertarian Michael C. Munger on Nov. 4.

On Friday, she was home in New Bern, where she started her political career and where she announced last October that she would run for governor.

"I got to sleep in my own bed," she said. She won't be in town long enough to see much more than the setup for the Mum Fest - "I'll miss it for the first time" - with five events to attend across the state today.

While at home, she toured BSH Home Appliances, touched bases with some of the local leaders who helped her get started, and gave a Sun Journal interview.

She talked about campaign ads for her opponent that have stabbed hard at her recently. "It's tough," she said.

"I pledged never to do ads again with personal attacks and I haven't," she said. Her promise came after ads got personal and negative in the campaign primary.

Perdue said "sticking to the issues" is the way to avoid negative campaigning although some of her ads pointed to issues have been labeled "tasteless" by her opponent.

"This is part of the American way of doing elections, but a part I find distasteful," she said.

Perdue said establishing a nonprofit endowment to pay campaign costs for candidates for state office would keep them independent of ties, or the appearance of ties, to any special interest. A Democrat who heads the Z. Smith Reynolds Endowment has agreed and a Republican counterpart will be selected to head it up.

The government now provides campaign financing for judicial races and some Council of State races, but "the high cost of running for governor makes it problematic to get that kind of money with the check-off" on tax returns, she said.

Perdue said she won't know the full cost of her campaign until it is over. But she suggested that $8 million to $9 million would be the goal for the endowment to allot to viable candidates who pledged not to run a negative political campaign or use personal attacks.

In answer to a question about rumblings in the region that Perdue will forget Eastern North Carolina as governor, she said, "I am running for governor of all 100 counties and plan to spend every ounce of my energy on their behalf."

She said her opponent has charged that municipalities get short shrift in state attention and allocations because of a focus on the rural east. But much of the state including Union, Lincoln, and Gaston counties which neighbor Pat McCrory's Charlotte home benefit from initiatives to develop the state's rural areas.

On the question being asked in the east "what have you done for me lately," Perdue pointed to the community college initiative helping to train skilled workers, the effort toward developing biofuels and agribusiness, and the N.C. History Education Center project now funded and under way in New Bern.

Perdue said that most of her campaigning in the next three weeks will keep her elsewhere, but "I will be home on Election Day to vote."