Mary Burke Was Fired from Her Family Business

Mary Burke has struggled on multiple accounts to get her message out on the Campaign Trail.  She has had to leave it mostly to her Ads and the help of her Allies.  Now in the latest big news about Mary Burke we find out that it is nothing new for her.  She was reported fired from her family business.

Right Wisconsin Story:

In attempting to explain her two-year work hiatus in the early to mid-1990s, Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke has said she was just burned out after an intense period of leading European operations for Trek Bicycle Corp., her family’s Waterloo-based global manufacturer.

In fact, Burke apparently was fired by her own family following steep overseas financial losses and plummeting morale among Burke’s European sales staff, multiple former Trek executives and employees told Wisconsin Reporter.

The sales team threatened to quit if Burke was not removed from her position as director of European Operations, according to Gary Ellerman, who served as Trek’s human resources director for more than 21 years. His account was confirmed by three other former employees.

“She was not performing. She was (in) so far over her head. She didn’t understand the bike business,” said Ellerman who started with Trek in 1992, at the tail end of Burke’s first stint as a manager at Trek.

Ellerman said Richard Burke, Mary Burke’s father and founder of the family business, asked Tom Albers, Trek president and chief financial officer at the time, to fly to Amsterdam to evaluate Mary’s performance.

It wasn’t a pretty picture. The European operations were in disarray, Ellerman said.