SC Johnson started its profit-sharing program in 1917. Fortune magazine reported in 2006 that profit-sharing added 19 percent to employees' salaries at all levels of the company. (One story that may be more local legend than fact is that car dealerships stayed open late on SCJ's profit-sharing days because employees would show up and pay cash for new cars.) It's unclear if SCJ has ever canceled profit sharing. The company did famously start its pension program in the teeth of the Great Depression.
The news was not necessarily a surprise for SCJ employees. Company executives had previously warned employees that the economy threatened profit-sharing this year.
Here's a statement from SC Johnson Spokesperson Jennifer Taylor about the company's financial health:
As a privately held company, we don't typically discuss financial matters. We are fortunate however that during this difficult and unpredictable economic time, unlike many companies, SC Johnson remains financially healthy. We continue to invest in the business to remain strong for the long term. In the end, that is what is best for the people of SC Johnson and for our community.
In fact, SC Johnson’s profitability and our balance sheet are such that we still have an A- long term debt rating, which is considered very strong. This debt rating information is publicly available so I figured I would provide it to you. Bottom line, SC Johnson remains profitable, and this is a year where we’re investing in our business.
I could hear the shreiking from here.
ReplyDeleteWOW!!!!!
ReplyDeleteHa Ha
ReplyDeleteMaybe some of these people who have been living as if that was guaranteed income will feel the same pain as the rest of us now.
Laugh if you like, but this is another stake in the heart for Racine. When SCJ catches cold, Racine is close to death. Obviously you are not considering the amount of funds of Profit Sharing that will not be spent in Racine or anywhere else. The SCJ workers are historically the highest wage earners in Racine. Thi swill ripple through retail and local donations - United Way, et al.
ReplyDeleteGet ready to feel some more pain while you laugh!
Sadly Forbes list of Billionaires raised the estimation of the individual Johnson kids, and their mother worth, from only $1.4 billion in 08, to to just $1.9 Billion in 09.
ReplyDeleteSo they are feeling the pain as well!
And just look at how much they do......... For themselves anyway!
Quick lets give them 100'K of more tax breaks!
ReplyDeleteThey did not catch a cold, they have been through worse times as stated in the article.
ReplyDeleteThe greed of this generation has just gotten up a good head of steam.
Now everyone knows how they are paying for project honor.
ReplyDeleteThe kids figured the employees would love to help build the temple!
How nice was that!!!
Billions for Johnson's and nothing for you peons!
ReplyDeleteAll hail J Wax!
I don't understand why anyone would wish ill will towards any Racine owned company and their employees.
ReplyDeleteEnvy is why, pure and simple.
ReplyDeleteI did not read of any ill will here as of yet?
ReplyDeleteTo what are you referring?
This is funny stuff.
ReplyDeleteHopefully this is the begining of the end.
At least they got huge tax breaks.
SCJ hacks:
Insert arrogant, self righteous, elitist, and cocky comments below please.
LMAO
Sorry we should not talk ill of of masters. Those who own and run this City. Yes IMHO Racine is owned by Johnson's
ReplyDeletethey after all have done so much for us!
A school system that less then 50% get a high school education.
with a school board they hand pick.
A city Adim
A City Grant Writer
The toy train KRM
The Uptown Art Project
My thought is they are behind the Historical District
These pampered employees will actually have to work harder (maybe get a second job) to survive?
ReplyDeleteAt least you still have a nice rec center to go to.
SCJ catches a cold?? I hope it turns into pneumonia and a coma, the quicker the better in fact.
ReplyDeleteWhy would any business want to move to Racine with the constant hostility toward one of its largest businesses?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure employees are not happy about SCJ canceling profit-sharing, I am also sure they are happy to still have jobs with a World Class company.
ReplyDeleteThey would not!!! SCJ would probably try to sue them, as they seem to do so often. Their creativity is nil, most of their most profitable products are the result of purchases. Windex,scrubbing bubbles etc. They were an Innovator now they are Corporate raiders, who dump on anyone or anything that gets in their way. Soon this generation will sell all of its product lines to another Co. It has already begun, remember the EDGE line???
ReplyDeleteGone!!!!!
Anon 7:47 is SPOT ON!
ReplyDeleteIf I worked for SCJ, I would cherish these "good" times as they will be fading fast in the next couple of years. I would probably be looking for a reliable back up plan right now as a matter of fact.
Just more proof that karma exists. SCJ has been screwing Racine and its workers for years. Now its coming back around and blowing up on them.
ReplyDeleteI think this can be blamed on several things:
1.) Legal costs for the Clorox VP executive lawsuit, the trucking scandal, and the tax manager they fired.
2.) The new building to honor Sleezy Sam and his stupid airplane.
3.) Fisk's incompetence to run a company.
4.) PR costs to cover up their Uptown bribery and tax evasion issue.
How many people even get profit sharing as it is? SCJ is probably 90% temps (not employees) as it is!
The good times are long past!
ReplyDeleteSCJ used to be a wonderful company, they treated their employees well and were a most admired company.
People speak of the arrogant employees they have.
Not all of that is true.
The people that are 50+ and have been with the company for 15+ yrs are in fact a very down to earth group.
It has been in just the last 15 yrs that no one, without a useless degree could get into the company.
I am not saying this in spite, as I have not attempted to get into SCJ.
But I do know a lot of good people that have.
Only to have the door slammed in their face beacuse they do not have a degree??
All of the Johnsons earned???? their degrees from the same University??? Wonder why???
Daddy or grandpa or great grand-pa, paid for all of it through contributions!!
The most arrogant can be easily identified by their position....if they mostly work with the temp service that Johnson uses "Personnel Inc."
They are more inclined to be the arrogant snooty, self righteous etc.
The old timers are regular people who really care of more than just themselves.
As for the rest rest...Karma says it all!!!
They'll give you a budget option, a high end option, and more options in between. They'll tell you about their top rated product, and when you're ready to go browsing, just type whatever you're looking for in the search box, and ShopWiki will scour the 'net for you.
ReplyDeleteThe average age of the room had to be at least 65. A few of Jim’s coworkers and their wives joined us and we did enjoy ourselves at the open bar and by eating all of the free shrimp we could get our hands on. I bid (on accident) on airfare vouches but somehow escaped without paying for them and Jim bid (on purpose) on a signed Tampa Bay Lightning jersey and won it for $50…because apparently you just can’t have enough autographed Lightning memorabilia!
ReplyDeleteI hope that those of you who are spewing venom regarding this topic at least feel better afterwards.
ReplyDeleteAnon 10:17 I disagree with your post from top to bottom.
ReplyDeleteI know several employees of this company, the over 50 group and at least a couple in the less than 15 yr tenure under 50 group.
All of them in my experience are very nice people, not arrogant etc. as some of you would have us believe.
As for the rest of the post pure rubbish.
I do not work there, just dream of it.
I am an SCJ Employe - No I am not "happy" about the 0% Profit Sharing - BUT I still work 40 hours a week for competative pay, 401K is still being funded, no cuts in benefits, no foreced days off.
ReplyDeleteNow the lack of PS this year will impact me - no new lawnmower from Central Saw, no Kitchen Remodel, Sorry Insinkerator and local craftsmen etc.
Ya, I hope you ancle btters have it as bad as I do, hhow well off is your company (if you are even working)?
Ankle biters?
ReplyDeleteThat was perhaps a bad choice of words I hope.
But yes, the loss of revenue will have a ripple effect that will impact a lot of people.
Fisk was ill-prepared to run the show. The Edge sale was desperation. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Leave a tip at the airplane, please.
ReplyDelete10:43 you are full of dung.
ReplyDeleteAre you trying to tell us that your entire profit sharing check went into local businesses???
Try again!!! Fool.
Didn't SCJ just put $50 million into the local/regional economy building Project Honor? That's very significant in my view of the world. That money didn't get spent in Rantoul or Beloit...it got spent here.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to believe all of the negative comments about one of the few companies doing well in Racine. I am sure SCJ is not perfect, but from what I can see, it is a good company and a good community citizen.
ReplyDeleteAnon 7:39 - and who is benefiting from "Project Honor"? Me? Racine? No - only the Johnson's like usual. Maybe you are new to the Racine Post, but Project Honor is costing Racine taxpayers potentially millions of dollars because of the Johnson's tax evasion scheme.
ReplyDeleteApparently when Obama spends Trillions of $ her doesn't have, its a "Stimulus" and good for us - when a private company spends their own money it's bad.
ReplyDeleteWhatever the Waxtrash Corporate Crime Family may do, the benefits are sure to be earmarked for that dollar-sign dynasty's spawn and a clique of Ivy League lackeys. Fortunes never grow innocently. To acquire and augment wealth, that crass clan will do anything it may deem necessary and expedient. So long as its obscene pecuniary piles continue to rise, the House of Wax will ignore its victims' pain and laugh all the way to the banks it owns in this corrupt company town.
ReplyDeleteI am tired of hearing all about how Jwax is our only hope. How we would have nothing without them. I watched several times how people or corporations get themselves into that kind of powerful position on purpose. Maybe just maybe we lost or our losing businesses to Racine because of Jwax influence. Maybe Jwax likes it that way. No competition for them to do as they like with a poor town that they can buy up and manipulate on the cheap.
ReplyDeleteYa, I hope you ancle btters have it as bad as I do, hhow well off is your company (if you are even working)?"
ReplyDeletethere's that SCJ ATTITUDE!!!
Thanks to the Waxtrash Corporate Crime Family, the sorry story of Racine is a tale of two cities: radiant Ray-Scene, the realm of the rich -- and raunchy Rat-Scene,where the rest of us struggle to survive.
ReplyDeleteSCJ is no different than any larger business. There are good people and ocean bottom feeders. But to take a full swipe at the whole organization is very small minded. This community has one of the largest unemployment levels in the country. To speak ill will of any Racine company , particularly privately owned is just idiotic. We need all the jobs we can get in Racine - and we should support these companies as well and hope for further growth in the future.
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:47 I agree totally.
ReplyDeleteSupporting privately-owned companies is sheer folly. They and the rest of the private sector exist exclusively for the benefit of the oligarchs who own them. The voracious greed of entrepreneurial leeches is the cause of our economic crisis as well as the explanation for the outrageous maldistribution of wealth in our country. Anyone who thinks that plutocrats will provide the rest of us with lucrative employment and decent working conditions is living in La-La Land.
ReplyDeleteAnon 10:55 - find a socialistic country to move to. Hopefully we'll get Obama out of office before the U.S. turns into one in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteLord willing,we'll build a just socio-economic system here in our good old USA. Once obscene fortunes are taxed down to sensible size, the rich won't be able to pit us against each other in their sickening rat race. When we no longer have to compete with our fellow man for survival, there'll be far less crime, cruelty and violence in our land.
ReplyDeleteSure penalize those that succeed and give to those who don't try. Everyone has an opportunity to excel in life, but there are those that go for it and those that wait for it - entitlements. If you are one of those that wait you have only yourself to blame. Get out there and do something yourself and don't rely on others.
ReplyDeleteMidwest Airlines used to give profit sharing and then that stopped too and that was prior to 2001 before they really went into the toilet. Look at them now! Not the same place it was when I started with them in 1989 and I can honestly say I wouldn't want to be there at all.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous 6/22/09 1:53 PM, The last thing we need is more Emersonian self-reliance pep talks and Transcendentalist tripe. The laissez-faire capitalist cult of the triumphant individual got us into our current crisis and will only exacerbate it.The sooner we shelve the rags-to-riches stories in the fiction section, the better. As for the quaint notion that disadvantaged people are lazy, it's pure plutocratic propaganda. The poorest people I know work two or three atrocious minimum-wage jobs in order to survive in this filthy system. By contrast, the Waxies do little if anything useful with their time. Our treasure tyrants possess obscene fortunes because somebody died and left them a bundle which our government foolishly permits them to retain.
ReplyDeleteSo are the poor people you know doing something about it. Are they going to Gateway to learn a new skill, are they going to Parkside to get a degree - just working multiple substandard jobs is not going to help them. They need to fend for themselves - get out and do something positive to improve their standard of life. That is the American way. Stop whining and stop expecting entitlements.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous 6/23/09 7:59 AM, It's clear that you've attended too many inspirational and motivational seminars or you'd never exhort exhausted paupers ground down by working multiple low-wage jobs to spend time and money which they lack acquiring job training which some corporate gatekeeper may declare obsolete even before they receive their diplomas. If forcing God's poor to strive and starve while attempting to perform impossible tasks is the American Way, we'd better change it fast. One good thing about the current economic crisis is its ability to knock the Horatio Alger nonsense out of bourgeois elitists who suddenly find themselves minus a steady income once bossie-poo or his flunkeys in the personnel office hand them their walking papers. I pray that you may develop some compassion for your disadvantaged fellow man without having to walk a mile in his worn-out shoes.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know I haven't walked in their shoes. Too many excuses, there's money available for education, there are evening courses. I don't want to hear that people have no choices. If they don't have a choice, they only have themselves to blame. As one company once said "Just Do It".
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous 6/23/09 10:18, Until we build a level playing field in our sad land, telling paupers to "just do it" is cruel. Forcing disadvantaged people to compete against people who receive more in a year than they'll be allowed to earn in their entire life times is an obscenity. Equating demands for social equity with whining and malingering shows a singular lack of empathy. Too bad that you're afraid that taxes to fund entitlement programs will delay your triumphal march to the socio-economic winner's circle. Did it ever occur to you that events beyond your control could transform you into one of society's losers? Someday you could require assistance. How would you like it if some Poobah sneered at you and snickered "just do it"?Please think about it. In today's uncertain economy, your descent into penury, poverty and pounding pugnacious pain could be a distinct possibility.
ReplyDeleteWe have a level playing field - this is a free society and eveyone has the same opportunities. The difference is some people take advantage of those opportunities, other elect not to do so. We all have choice in life. I chose to go to school, paid tuition from working from the time I had a paper route, through high school and during college. Then secured a job, worked hard and excelled within the company. I planned for the future so that if unemployment, illness or death would occur my family would be taken care of - not through the government. Your defeatest attitude sickens me.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous 6/23/09 11:25, No, I'm not defeatest--just realistic about the manifold class-based cruelties of our me-enterprise grab-it-all-ist system. I sincerely pray that you may never end up where most of our wasted wage slaves end their existence--on the scrap heap. It's time that we joined the rest of the civilized world and protected our people from poverty cradle to grave.
ReplyDeleteYou are not a realist - you are an opportunist. Get out there and make something of yourself. Don't rely on others taking care of you -
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous 6/23/09 12:45, The almighty House of Wax and its pack of Ivy League opportunists must love you. Your callous corporate propaganda is part of a stream of antediluvian muck going back to Emerson which flowed into the twentieth century via Frank Lloyd Wright and Ayn Rand. From their ghastly gunk it meandered into our era disguised as Rhonda Byrne's The Secret and other big-buck blather. As I said, I wouldn't trust the private sector or my own feeble resources to shield anyone from indigence. When you least expect it, the system could fail you and you could wind up with nada. The oligarchs are all-too-good at reneging on their promises to their salary serfs--the recent Waxtrash refusal to issue profit-sharing checks to employees is no fluke. For heaven's sake, remember that you're not invincible. Please understand that government is the only protector ordinary people possess. For the poor, the vulnerable and the disabled, government is the sole source of security.Have pity on the least among us for in so doing you may obtain mercy for yourself.
ReplyDeleteI have no pity for you and those that do nothing to improve their lives. Government isn't a babysitter even though you seem to rely on it. I'll rely on the private sector over the government any day. You are definitely living in the wrong country - that is of course if we can get Obama out of office after one term. He certainly is trying to design the socialist country you yearn for.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous 6/23/09 , 1:33PM, How do you know that I seek or receive government largesse? For your righteous, right-wing information, I won scholarships which enabled me to earn a triple doctorate. Although I possess credentials and have published three books sans the aid of a vanity press, I want the poor to benefit from government programs. While I worked on my doctorate at Wayne State University (Detroit, MI), I witnessed the cruelty of the rich toward the poor. Although the bloated plutocrats could support the Institute of Fine Arts, extracting cash from those cruds for free clinics and other facilities of interest to ordinary people was tantamount to pulling teeth. My volunteer work taught me more about the privileged strata of society and their heartless obsession with exquisite objects than I cared to know. Like our filthy Waxtrash, the Motor City's execu-pigs doted on paintings while scorning people. Trust me, I jumped through their silly hoops, acquired credentials and played their vicious competitive games in order to survive. All I learned was a visceral antipathy to moneyed degener-twits and the rest of the sadistic trash-rats who imposed such ordeals on their victims. Until the fiscal fiends' power is forever broken, government must be there as the common man's protector and provider of last resort.
ReplyDeleteTake your babble elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous 6/23/09 1;33, Alas, I'll have to put an apostrophe after the word "fiends" in the final sentence of my last message. Just thinking about the misery in Detroit was enough to disorient me. If the rich were smart, they'd treat the poor better. What goes around comes around. Believe me, I saw "The Man with the Hoe" rise up and fry his oppressors' property during the Urban Insurrection of July, 1967. Government aid could have kept some of the Motor City's minimum-wage toilers from venting their rage on richie-poo's stores and warehouses. We should view the taxes we pay for anti-poverty programs as our annual premiums on our social stability insurance policies.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous, Although I babble, I know whereof I write--this evil little town is getting ready to blow its lid to smithereens. Callous privileged twits, smug middle-class creeps endowed with zero compassion and a corrupt municipal machine will unwittingly light the fuse. All I hope and pray is that God's poor don't harm you--you seem to be a sincere if misguided believer in supply-side bosh rather than a sadist who delights in the misery of the less-fortunate. Please wake up. There is no such thing as wealth creation by sinful humanity. Only God can make something from nothing. We imperfect humans just play with what He brought into existence. There's only so much of any commodity in the world. When somebody's got more than his fair share, that means the rest have been cheated by him. God bless you! Babblin' Babe
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous Believer in the Money-Mutts' Meritocratic Myths, Whether we like it or not,Rat-Scene is ripe for an urban insurrection. Many of the same indicators which heralded the Detroit Riots of July, 1967 are here in The Rodent City. For starters, we have record unemployment, poverty and foreclosure rates. Then there's our out-of-control gang situation coupled with inter-racial animosity. Like Motown in the sixties, Rat-Scene has an underpaid and under-staffed police force, a once-comfortable middle class sinking into penury, a tarted-up downtown which contrasts strangely with a decaying inner core, empty stores galore and an arty oligarchy which doesn't care a fig about the misery of the ordinary people. (Right before Detroit exploded in blood and fire, the high-and-mighty elite had blown a bundle on the Institute of Fine Arts and a theater affiliated with Wayne State University. Look at all the Poobah toys in this town--every time my nurse drives me through our Lakeside Business District, I experience a sense of deja vu. When this sorry city sizzles, please don't say that I didn't warn you and other well-intentioned but hyper-privileged people who didn't think that it could happen here.) Add the hot, muggy weather--always a trial to the poor-- plus the loss of the June Waxtrash profit-sharing checks from the local economy and we've got a perfect recipe for an urban upheaval. Please be careful. God bless you!
ReplyDeleteThe right-wing Rich-Pig-Lican told the poor woman that we live in a free society. Ha! The only ones who get any freebies are the opportunists from J-Wax. They rob everybody blind but no one puts them in jail. They gyp the city out of property tax revenue and pass the burden on to little people, but nobody punishes them.They con municipal officials into buying ugly scrap yard art so Nic Noblique can afford the down payment on a studio here. (By the way, Noblique was no fool. He took the money but he didn't invest in Racine real estate as planned by J-Wax.) If you or I did any of this sleazy stuff, we'd be fined or sent to the pokey. But because the J-Wax scum are rich, they're free as can be and nobody punishes them. If a society in which privileged people are free to hurt the rest of the community is a free society, we don't need it. That kind of so-called liberty can go and we won't miss it.
ReplyDeleteThe only liberty worth having is freedom from poverty. All the other "freedoms" we brag about here are a sick joke and absolutely useless to a poor person. Hope President Obama nationalizes J-Wax. Then we'll have some real profit-sharing.
ReplyDeleteIf Obama seizes J-Wax, what will happen to Sam's silly Sick-orsky seaplane? Maybe the government will sell it to an oil sheik and use the dough to fund Social Security. Seriously, the only profit-sharing program ordinary folks can rely on is socialism.
ReplyDeleteThat anonymous Babblin' Babe was too nice to the arrogant snob who dissed her. She ought to ask God to blast him, not bless him. I wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be a J-Wax hack. Those creeps are big on telling everyone to "excel" at "the company" just as they yap about "excellence" at their snotty school. Hope he and his masters lose it all. Maybe he'll wind up delivering Babblin' Babe's morning paper.
ReplyDeleteAmen! Tax the Wax!
ReplyDeleteTimes are tough - no profit sharing is better than what many people are facing. And Racine needs to be thankful Johnson Wax remains headquartered here.
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