Category Archives: unemployment

elections, Environment, Manufacturing, Pittsburgh, Steelworkers, unemployment

U.S. Steel Cancels $1 Billion Upgrades to Local Facilities; Plans to Close High Emissions Batteries at Clairton Coke Works

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Clairton Coke Works

By Kimberly Rooney
Pittsburgh City Paper

April 30, 2021 – U.S. Steel Corporation is cancelling its $1 billion upgrades to its Mon Valley Works facilities, which includes Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, Irvin Plant in West Mifflin, and the Clairton Coke Works in Clairton. While the cancellation will likely result in some job losses in the region, it will also reduce the levels of harmful air pollution in the Mon Valley and beyond.

The upgrades, which were announced May 2019, would have included a casting and rolling facility and a cogeneration plant. After several delays due to COVID in 2020 that increased the upgrade costs to a promised $1.5 billion, U.S. Steel pushed the start date of those upgrades to the fourth quarter of 2022. But today, the company announced it would be scrapping those plans entirely.

In addition to cancelling these updates, U.S. Steel plans to permanently idle batteries one through three at Clairton Coke Works by the first quarter of 2023. Batteries one through three are the oldest at the Coke Works and can allow twotothree times more emissions than the rest of the facility, according to environmental groups.

According to the EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment, toxic air pollution contributes to high risk of cancer, and Clairton Coke Works is responsible for many of the airborne carcinogens in the region. Asthma rates among children in Clairton are three times higher than in the rest of the county.

“For too long, U.S. Steel has run roughshod over our environmental protections and churned out dangerous levels of harmful air pollution,” says PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center clean air advocate Zachary Barber. “Closing these batteries is a necessary and longoverdue step toward reducing that damage and cleaning our region’s air.”

Clairton Coke Works received a $1 million fine from the Allegheny County Health Department in 2019, as well as another $383,450 fine in March 2021. A study from the University of Pittsburgh also confirmed this week that the fire at the Coke Works in December 2018, which destroyed pollution controls, increased asthma exacerbations for residents in the surrounding area.

U.S. Steel President and CEO David Burritt cites the goal for the company to become carbon neutral by 2050 as a motivation for canceling the plan upgrades. As part of that goal, U.S. Steel will shift toward electric arc furnaces, such as Big River Steel, of which U.S. Steel bought a minority share in 2019, in Arkansas.

There are currently about 130 fulltime workers at the three Clairton Coke Works batteries that will be idled. U.S. Steel plans to avoid layoffs by reducing the workforce through retirements and reassignments. According to Pittsburgh Works Together, a cooperative venture mostly comprised of fossilfuel companies and the labor unions that represent their workers, the closures will result in the loss of hundreds of potential construction jobs for the region.

“I am deeply disappointed that the company has broken its promise to the Mon Valley and its own workers by scrapping a plan that would have made the Mon Valley Works the first project of its kind, provided cleaner air for our community and good jobs that would have helped this area prosper for decades,” says state Rep. Austin Davis (DMckeesport), whose district includes the Clairton Coke Works. “I believe that we can create familysustaining jobs and a clean environment.”

From March 30 to April 7, the Mon Valley was one of the top10 worst places for air quality in America. Advocates such as Barber have long criticized Clairton Coke Works’ dangerous emissions, and PennEnvironment had previously called for the batteries to be taken offline when air quality was poor.

“While we are pleased by this development, we still must remain vigilant — especially in light of U.S. Steel’s decadeslong history of legal violations and broken promises,” Barber says. “Local leaders must keep working to ratchet down industrial pollution to ensure that everyone has clean air to breathe every day of the year.”

And it’s possible these upgrade cancellations will have longterm effects on U.S. Steel’s future in the Mon Valley and the Pittsburgh region. As University of Pittsburgh economist Chris Briem notes on Twitter, the status of the Clairton Coke Works and the Edgar Thompson Works is bleak without any upgrades to those legacy facilities.

climate, Economy, Green Energy, Green Jobs, unemployment

Report: Pennsylvania Stands To Gain 243,000 Jobs A Year From Clean Energy Investment

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Workers install solar panels on the roof of Global Links, a medical relief nonprofit, in Green Tree, Pa., on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020. JARED MURPHY / 90.5 WESA

By AN-LI HERRING
WESA-FM

Jan 28, 2021 – Although President Joe Biden’s actions on climate change have stirred anxieties about job loss in energy-producing states like Pennsylvania, a new report predicts that plans like Biden’s could create roughly a quarter-million jobs annually in the Commonwealth. And within hours after the report’s release, local officials announced a small but symbolic down payment on green energy investment.

The 243,000 clean-energy jobs that could be created each year over the next decade in Pennsylvania “are jobs across the board,” said Robert Pollin, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the study’s authors.

“We’re looking at jobs for carpenters, machinists, environmental scientists, secretaries, accountants, truck drivers, roofers, agricultural labor,” Pollin said, referring to positions that would be required to achieve higher energy efficiency standards, develop new products and infrastructure, and restore land that’s been used for mining and drilling.

UMass Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute released the report Thursday, a day after Biden signed a round of executive orders that aim to supercharge the country’s efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Co-authored by Pollin, the report quantifies the potential impact on Pennsylvania jobs of a clean energy strategy developed by ReImagine Appalachia, a coalition of progressive policy and environmental groups. The coalition seeks to facilitate a “just transition” to a clean energy economy in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, whose economies have traditionally depended on extraction-based fossil fuel industries. ReImagine Appalachia’s blueprint strives to ensure those states can generate well-paying jobs during a decades-long shift to carbon-free energy.

With adequate funding over the next 10 years, the plan would fuel the creation of an average of 162,000 jobs annually in clean energy and 81,000 positions a year in public infrastructure, manufacturing, land restoration, and agriculture, according to Thursday’s study.

The study estimates that an average annual investment of $31 billion would be needed from both the public and private sectors. During the presidential campaign, Biden pledged to invest $2 trillion in such efforts, with the goal of eliminating carbon pollution from the power sector by 2035 and from the entire U.S. economy by 2050.

“The level of funding necessary [is] a lot. But it’s 3 percent of [the] GDP of the state … So it’s affordable,” Pollin said. And he noted that the employment gains his report predicts would amount to about 4 percent of the state’s workforce.

“So if you’re looking at an economy which has a 7 percent unemployment rate [similar to Pennsylvania], these programs lower the unemployment rate to 3 percent – that’s how dramatic it would be,” Pollin said.

Powering up

Allegheny County took a modest step toward that goal on Thursday, when County Executive Rich Fitzgerald announced that, starting as early as mid-2023, all county-owned facilities will draw energy from a low-impact hydropower plant located on the Ohio River.

Fitzgerald called the move a “long-term investment in how we light and power our facilities using our natural resources without using fossil fuels.” He said it comes during a “landmark week,” during which the county met federal air quality standards for the first time ever.

Continue reading Report: Pennsylvania Stands To Gain 243,000 Jobs A Year From Clean Energy Investment →
fair trade, Manufacturing, trade unions, unemployment

‘We’re the Sacrificial Lamb’: Lordstown Workers On the UAW Plant Closures

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By Carter Eugene Adams
Organizing Work via Portside

 

Nov 11, 2019 – The Monday after Thanksgiving last year, workers at the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Plant in Ohio were called in for a 9 a.m. meeting. This was a rare occurrence.

“I don’t know, was it three sentences long maybe? ‘Hey, you’re unallocated.’ …No one had ever heard of ‘unallocated’,” says John Sandquist, Jr., a 25-year employee of GM. “We didn’t know what that term meant… Basically, it meant ‘you guys are closing.’”

The Lordstown plant is the former home of the Chevy Cruze and 1,600 workers. For almost a year now, no product has been coming out of the plant, with workers transferred, forced into early retirement or just out of work. Over the past year, GM has transferred over 700 workers from Lordstown to various plants across the country, mostly out of Ohio. According to the tentative agreement between GM and the UAW, the plant closure will be permanent.

Sonya Woods, a 25-year employee of GM, who was transferred to Bowling Green Kentucky, says she had to either move, or lose everything she’s worked towards.

“Gotta go or I lose my pension, lose my benefits,” said Woods. “They got us screwed. There’s a big group that have ‘95 seniority, 25 years, and we lose a lot if we don’t follow it. We don’t have much choice.”

Last week, outside of the shuttered factory, four workers held the picket line, along with 49,000 other GM employees still on strike, even as news of the proposed agreement between GM and the UAW started to circulate. The four were getting ready to transition to other plants when the strike was called. The locals at their new plants allowed them to come back to Ohio to do their strike duty at their home plant, as the Lordstown plant closure was one of the issues on the table between GM and the UAW.

At the picket, workers stood around a burn barrel. Harsh orange streetlamps illuminated an empty, fenced-in parking lot. The 6.2 million-square-foot behemoth factory acted as an eerie monument to what was once an industrial hub in northeastern Ohio. It was silent except for the drone of trucks driving by on the Ohio Turnpike.

“This used to be non-stop traffic, non-stop. Look, nothing!” said Agnes Hernandez, a 23-year GM employee.

“This is the truck gate,” added Sandquist.

“There would be lines, remember?” replied Hernandez. “We’d have lines of trucks coming out here.”

After a moment, Hernandez realized Sandquist didn’t have his signature clothing item: his orange vest.

“Go get your vest on! Come on, OVS!” Agnes jokingly shouted.

This group of friends, who spent nearly every day together in this plant for decades, called themselves the “Orange Vest Society.” The orange vest is standard attire for workers in the plant. But whether or not a given worker was wearing orange was semantics. Those in OVS felt they had another layer of protection between them and management. Having the solidarity and at times friendship of those on the shop floor gave workers a sense of “you watch my back, I watch yours.”

The origins of this group are vague, but as Dan Santangelo, a 25-year employee of GM put it, the roots of it are solidarity and comradery. “Management would start something with one of us, and it just started as a joke: ‘You mess with one person in Orange Vest you mess with us all.’ We don’t know who came up with it, maybe it might have been Jeff” — OVS member and fellow worker on the picket line – “came up and said, ‘we should call ourselves the Orange Vest Society.’ So, that’s what we did. On our last day here, we spray painted it on the wall behind out team center.”

The proposed contract appears set for ratification. Besides the plant in Lordstown, it cements the closure of two more GM facilities — Warren transmission and Baltimore transmission — three of the four that were on the table.

GM’s stated the reason for the Lordstown closure was the Cruze’s poor sales performance in the United States, with consumers opting for larger SUVs and trucks. But months after the shuttering, GM announced the production of a strikingly similar vehicle , the Onix, to be built and sold in Mexico. GM has also announced its revitalized production of the Chevy Blazer in Mexico, shortly after shuttering the Janesville, Wisconsin plant where it used to be made.

Workers think the production of the Onix could have taken place at Lordstown Assembly and kept the plant open. Sandquist feels the continued closure of Lordstown has little to do with the product they produced and more to do with GM attempting to fracture worker power and solidarity.

“This community, this plant — we’ve always built a good product here for 53 years,” said Sandquist. “I believe it’s something personal they have against the local 1112, it’s something personal against this plant because the union was strong here and we cared about the community. They’re more concerned about profits.”

For workers in Lordstown, transfers to plants hours from home, buyouts and early retirements are their consolation prize.

In 2007, workers were understanding of concessions needed to keep the company alive and acted accordingly. 12 years later, with record profits recorded and salaries for company executives in the tens of millions, workers want what they’re owed.

But trying to negotiate that has been difficult. The six weeks of the strike have seen agreements proposed and then removed in the same day. Negotiations stalled, started and stalled again. The latest draft of the proposed contract is four volumes long.

As Parma, Ohio UAW Local 1005 President Mike Caldwell explains, it’s necessary. “Every single thing in [our] shop was negotiated,” said Caldwell. “At one point in time, someone had to fight for it and negotiate for it.”

The new contract between the UAW and GM meets many demands that sent workers to the picket line. Those include a revised healthcare plan; gradual wage increases and a path for temporary workers to be hired on full-time.

By not pushing further on running product through Lordstown, UAW officials in Detroit have affectively abandoned shuttered plants in pursuit of other demands. Lordstown assembly, Warren transmission and Baltimore transmission plants are the union’s biggest concessions.

“We’re the sacrificial lamb in this one,” Sandquist said. “They’re gonna sacrifice Lordstown for the good of the whole, and the whole UAW membership. I get their point, but it sucks for us, and I’m pissed off about it.”

Caldwell weighed in on Lordstown remaining closed after members of local 1005 voted to ratify the contract, 438 for, 404 against. “It’s still kind of a sad spot for everyone that that plant is still slated to close,” he said. “It’s very disappointing, with that plant closing, that destroys that entire community.”

Keeping the Lordstown plant closed means workers have a difficult decision to make: either lose their jobs or transfer to another plant. Workers who did not qualify for early retirement were given the one-time offer to transfer and continue working until they’re eligible to collect their pensions and retirement benefits. The new proposed agreement offers a buyout, but according to the highlights of the agreement, distributed by UAW, that buyout doesn’t offer much.

For workers who choose the buyout option, they agree to terminate their employment and benefits, save for some pension benefits. In return, they’re offered a sum of money, between $7,500 and $75,000, based on years of service.

While that may seem like a lot offered, that money is just that: money. No benefits, no health care. And for people living paycheck-to-paycheck, those benefits are all they have. For those with more seniority, they’re choosing between cash or decades worth of pension and retirement benefits.

The four members of the Orange Vest Society decided to transfer so they can make it to their pension and keep their benefits. They’ll be eight hours from Lordstown in Bowling Green, Kentucky and six hours away in Bedford, Indiana — leaving their families and their community.

“It sucks. Every one of these people right here around this burn barrel is going through that,” said Sandquist. “He has a family that is here and he’s gonna be eight hours away, same with Agnes, same with this man Dan over here. He’s got a wife, two kids. Agnes has got grandkids now for Christ’s sake, she ain’t gonna see them grow up.”

“What do I do now? Facetime?” said Hernandez. “I mean you can’t see everything on Facetime. You know, it’s like my grandson, he’ll be two in January and he looks at me through the phone it’s almost like he has to do a double-take to see and hear my voice. Just so he knows me, I have to keep repeating who I am. It’s so, it’s horrible. It’s like, ‘oh my god, he’s gonna forget me.’ Being that young he’s gonna forget who I am, you know, and that to me is just heartbreaking.”

In addition to uprooting their entire lives and leaving family here in Ohio, this also means the end of the Orange Vest Society.

Even off the shop floor, through the upheaval of the plant closure, OVS became a way for workers to look out for each other.

“I went through a very bad time before I had to go to Bedford (Indiana), I was almost as low as killing myself, that’s how low I was.” said Santangelo, as a result of having to leave his family, his home and his community. “Not only did my blood family reach out to me, but these guys did as well,” he said. “Jeff would call every other day to check in. ‘How you doing?’ He would try to get me talking. That’s. That’s the Orange Vest Society.”

“ I think this was our mentality.We came to work to have fun and to work. In that order,” explained Santangelo. “We made it enjoyable. We made it worth our while to be here.”

“Yeah, but the place is so miserable you had to do something,” added Sandquist.

As the night goes on, the conversation shifts and changes, from heated discussions about the proposed contract to jokes about how many liquor bars and sex shops there are in Kentucky. The remaining OVS members talk about home, about what, and who, they’re leaving in order to provide. There are also long moments of silence on the picket line, between the jokes and contract talk. Against the backdrop of the shuttered plant, there’s this feeling that this is the end of an era.

“It was like a second family,” said Hernandez. “I mean we hung out together, we’ve known each other for 2o-plus years. These are my brothers.”

Agnes and Jeff go into the Styrofoam cooler next to the wood pile under a small nylon canopy. After a few minutes the two emerge with plastic cups. Dan had declined the offer earlier and joins the toast emptyhanded.

After the toast, the group sits and talks for a while longer before slowly, one by one, leaving.

Shortly after midnight, Sandquist is packing up his chairs and getting ready to head back to the union hall to sign out before finally going home. Before he heads out, he reflects on the future of the Orange Vest Society. “We might end up having a little chapter down in Bowling Green, one in Bedford, some of our friends up in Toledo will have a little — there’s a couple of us everywhere but the original core group is split up,” he says.

“That’s the stuff that pisses you off even more, you know, it’s the friendships, your family, your secondary family. You’re not gonna spend time with them no more, or you know, have them relationships. Talk on the phone or text, see what’s up with them but not like you use to. Kinda at the end, it’s over and it’s sad.”

Continue reading ‘We’re the Sacrificial Lamb’: Lordstown Workers On the UAW Plant Closures →

Economy, unemployment

Conway Workers, Local Leaders Caught Off Guard By Norfolk Southern Job Cuts

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By Chrissy Suttles
Beaver County Times

Sep 4, 2019 – CONWAY — Norfolk Southern Railway did not give local leaders prior notice before cutting more than 50 employees at the Conway Yards switching station Tuesday.

“I read it in the newspaper this morning,” Beaver County Commissioner Tony Amadio said, echoing statements by state Sen. Elder Vogel Jr., R-47, New Sewickley Township, and others throughout the county.

When management told roughly 55 mechanical workers they would be laid off, many were caught off guard.

“It was mostly mechanics and electricians who were let go,” said one person who still works at Conway Yards and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Someone from corporate came in to reassure everyone afterward, but he sidestepped our questions. We’re frustrated with how it’s been handled.”

Those who lost their jobs will retain a number of company benefits for the next several months, but it’s unlikely anyone will return to work.

Norfolk Southern announced an additional 100 layoffs at the Juniata Locomotive Shop in Altoona, but some of those electricians may relocate to Beaver County to work at Shell Chemicals’ ethane cracker plant, the Altoona Mirror reported.

The Conway Yards, which snakes along the Ohio River in Freedom and Conway, is one of the largest rail yards in the country. Norfolk Southern Vice President of Communications Tom Werner said the eliminated positions were no longer vital to railway operations as the company moves to precision-scheduled railroading – or parking locomotives, cutting travel time and reducing jobs to better match peer performance.

Earlier this year, railroad representatives revealed plans to eliminate 3,000 positions companywide by 2022 to hit financial goals. While a declining coal industry is partly to blame, the Virginia-based rail carrier has gradually increased its transport of chemicals, steel and lumber in recent years.

“On-time performance and train speed is hitting records highs, and terminal dwell is becoming lower than any time in memory,” Werner said. “That’s all good for serving the customers. The downside for our employees in mechanical is that fewer locomotives means fewer locomotives to be maintained.” Continue reading Conway Workers, Local Leaders Caught Off Guard By Norfolk Southern Job Cuts →

Aliquippa, Manufacturing, unemployment, Youth and students

High-Tech Manufacturing: Aliquippa Summer Camp Opens New World to Students

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Kordell Boose, 17, of Aliquippa takes instruction on finishing an aluminum cast during the Titans of Pittsburgh Summer Camp’s field trip Wednesday to Robert Morris University’s engineering lab. [Lucy Schaly/For BCT]

Learning about career opportunities in the manufacturing industry is the purpose of the pilot Titans of Pittsburgh Summer Program developed by Catalyst Connection and Southwestern Pennsylvania BotsIQ.

By Marsha Keefer
Beaver County Times

Aug 10, 2019 – MOON TWP. — Students, most of them from Aliquippa, gathered Wednesday at a robotic work cell in an engineering lab at Robert Morris University’s John Jay Center for the School of Engineering, Mathematics and Science.

For most, it was a seminal moment. The two previous days, they sat at computers at the Family Life Center housed in the Church in the Round in Aliquippa, and used software to design a product. Now, those drafts would be programmed into a computer-controlled milling machine to carve their designs in a rectangular block of aluminum — a process that took all of seven minutes.

What had been merely a concept would come to life.

Most of the 23 students enrolled in the four-day summer camp — high school juniors and seniors and a few recent graduates — had never worked with computer-aided design (CAD) programs and certainly not computer numerical control (CNC) routers, said Scott Dietz, director of workforce initiatives at Catalyst Connection, an economic development organization based in Pittsburgh that helps small- to medium-sized manufacturers improve competitive performance.

“We’re seeing sparks happening already this week in the few days we’ve had with them,” he said. “We’re seeing light bulbs going off. The students are seeing stuff they haven’t been exposed to before. We think the program is definitely a success.”

Essentially, learning about career opportunities in the manufacturing industry, is the purpose of the pilot Titans of Pittsburgh Summer Program developed by Catalyst Connection and Southwestern Pennsylvania BotsIQ, a manufacturing workforce development program that engages high school students in robotics competitions to stimulate interest in manufacturing careers.

Catalyst Connection works with 2,800 manufacturing companies across 12 counties in western Pennsylvania, Beaver County included, Dietz said.

“When we go in their doors, the first thing they tell us when we ask ‘what is their biggest pain point’ is workforce — lack of workforce,” he said.

Dietz estimated 30 percent of the current workforce will retire in the next 10 years and that’s compounded by the large number of job needs now.

“We recently did a survey of 100 of those manufacturers who told us they have 2,300 job openings,” he said. Extrapolating those numbers, Catalyst Connection projects a shortage of about 20,000 workers, Dietz said. Continue reading High-Tech Manufacturing: Aliquippa Summer Camp Opens New World to Students →

labor, Manufacturing, trade unions, unemployment

The Road Not Taken

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The shuttering of the GM works in Lordstown will also bury a lost chapter in the fight for workers’ control.

By Sarah Jaffe
The New Republic

June 24, 2019 – Illustration by Nicolas Ortega Chuckie Denison took the podium at the United Steelworkers hall in Canton, Ohio, in his ever-present blue Good Jobs Nation T-shirt, flanked by people holding protest signs. One handmade sign read “Promises Made, Promises Broken”; it featured a likeness of President Trump, who’d flown into Ohio that day for a big-money fund-raiser at a nearby country club. Another sign pointed out that Lordstown, home of the iconic General Motors auto plant, was only 49.4 miles away. Still another read, “We will lose 43,000 jobs because of Lordstown closing.”

Denison leaned into the microphone and told the assembled crowd his story, introducing himself as a third-generation GM autoworker. “I started in Dayton, Ohio. I watched that plant close. I went to Shreveport, Louisiana. I watched that plant close. I come here to Lordstown, Ohio, happy to be back in my home state. I’d never have thought that Lordstown would close.”

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Denison said, Trump came to northeast Ohio and promised better days. “He looked the people in the eyes and told them, ‘Do not sell your homes. The jobs are coming back.’”

The jobs never came back. When GM announced, last November, that the Lordstown plant would be closed as part of a restructuring plan, the community held out hope that the company would decide to retool the plant, and rehire some of the laid-off workers. But the last Chevrolet Cruze rolled off the Lordstown assembly line on March 6—a no-frills white model that workers draped in an American flag and posed behind for a last photo.

Variations of this scene have played out in countless shuttered plants and deindustrializing communities over the past four decades. But with the closure of Lordstown, workers are losing more than paychecks, retirement plans, and long-term job security; they’re also burying a lost chapter in union organizing—the moment in the early 1970s when the militant leaders of United Auto Workers Local 1112 at the Lordstown facility briefly revived the demand for greater control in the workplace. With the specter of Trump, the self-advertised mogul-savior of the manufacturing sector, lurking offstage, the last days of Lordstown feel like a parable about what becomes of workers in a political economy that hinges on their systematic disenfranchisement—on the factory floor and in the public sphere alike.

And as a twenty-first–century parable of the workplace, it naturally involved Donald Trump spouting off on Twitter. Nearly two weeks after the last car left the plant, Trump fired off a couple of tweets telling David Green, president of UAW Local 1112, to “get his act together and produce.” That outburst, combined with the news that Trump was heading to Ohio but skipping the plant, led to the press conference where Denison had laid into GM and Trump.

At the same event, Ohio Democratic Representative Tim Ryan—who’s mounting a 2020 run at the presidency—spoke about how plant closures destabilize the entire community. “You hear from a football booster, ‘So-and-so had to transfer. He was treasurer of the football boosters. So-and-so had to transfer. They ran this Boy Scout group,’” he said. “That’s what workers are…. They put their time in. You do everything right and then when you get home, you go coach Little League.” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten joined him in calling for GM to reopen the plant. “If parents lose their jobs, it devastates the community,” she told me afterward. “Teachers understand that; they are in some ways the first responders.”

Alyssa Brookbank is one of those teachers and the president of the Lordstown Teachers Association. She’s seen the effects of the shutdown up close. “Students know they are going to have to leave some of their family and close friends behind,” she said. “They don’t know how to handle it, and it is not their fault. It is a lot to put on the shoulders of young kids. This is much bigger than just GM. It is going to affect other businesses in ways we don’t even realize yet. It is going to have a ripple effect.”

Denison has the words “Union Thug” tattooed across his forearm in sweeping script. Higher up on his arm, he told me, he has a tattoo of the state of Ohio. He returned to Ohio, to work at Lordstown, just in time for the bottom to fall out of the economy in 2008. By that time, he had enough seniority with GM—having hired on right out of high school in 1998—to survive the wave of layoffs that came with GM’s bankruptcy filing in the wake of the crash. “The biggest thing wasn’t the money,” he says now. “It was the fact that I had a pension.” Because of those benefits, he was able to retire this year after 20 years of factory labor. He’s one of the lucky ones. Continue reading The Road Not Taken →

labor, Manufacturing, trade unions, unemployment

GM’s Lordstown Chevy Cruze Plant Closes Amidst Protests

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Employees of the General Motors Lordstown Complex were the largest group of workers from a single Ohio employer were displaced by mass layoffs 

It may re-open in the summer. For 1,600 workers, that’s not much comfort at all.

By David Grossman
Mechanics Illustrated

Mar 7, 2019 – General Motors’ Lordstown Assembly plant was in continual operation since 1966 through yesterday, March 6, 2019. The idling of the plant affected 1,600 workers and is the largest of the U.S-based GM four plants that will close this year.

Originally dedicated to iconic cars like the Chevy Impala and Pontiac Firebird, since 2011 the plant built electric Chevy Cruzes. Through the years, the planet built over 16 million cars. However, amidst a restructuring the company decided to discontinue the model in America.

In a press statement, GM said that the Cruze “was a good product and was built with tremendous pride by the Lordstown employees. We know this is an emotional day for our Lordstown team.” Continue reading GM’s Lordstown Chevy Cruze Plant Closes Amidst Protests →

Manufacturing, unemployment

GM Job Losses Fail to Dent Trump Support in Ohio Stronghold–So Far

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Not Trump’s fault: Linda Balogh does not blame the US president for the job losses © Jeff Swensen

Auto crisis hits Midwestern region that swung to Republicans in 2016 election

 

By Patti Waldmeir in Warren, Ohio
FinancialTimes

Dec 21, 2018 – “I bet [General Motors’ chief executive] Mary Barra’s hands don’t look or feel like my hands,” said Linda Balogh, 52, as she reflected on the toll that her years on the production line have taken on her body.

Now she is about to lose her job, at the GM Lordstown plant near Youngstown, Ohio. It is one of four US factories that Ms Barra plans to idle next year as the American auto industry embarks on its most extensive restructuring since GM went bankrupt a decade ago.

Ms Balogh will not be the last to face redundancy, as Ford and GM prepare for a US sales downturn and scramble to cut costs so they can invest in new technologies for a future when cars are increasingly self-driving, electric and shared.

GM has said it will cut more than 11,000 jobs in North America, and Ford may cut twice that number, though many will be overseas. The scale of those job losses will hit hardest in areas such as Warren near Youngstown, where the plant is located. It was already a potent symbol of rust belt decline after its steel mills closed 40 years ago, leaving it heavily dependent on a GM plant that will soon stop production. Continue reading GM Job Losses Fail to Dent Trump Support in Ohio Stronghold–So Far →

Economy, labor, Manufacturing, trade unions, unemployment

Impact of GM Lordstown Shutdown Will Be Felt for Many Years

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story tease

New Chevy Cruze models at Lordstown 

By Jordyn Grzelewski

The Youngstown Vindicator

jgrzelewski@vindy.com

LORDSTOWN, Dec 2, 2018 – Michelle Ripple has experienced the ups and downs of the General Motors Lordstown plant her entire life.

Her father worked at the plant for more than 40 years; she’s worked there for 18. The 49-year-old mother of three works as a carpet retainer installer.

Like many in the Mahoning Valley, the plant has been an integral part of her family’s history and ability to earn a living. Extended family members have worked there, too, over the years. At family gatherings, these were the people who Ripple could talk to about her work, knowing they would get it.

So when Ripple, of Hubbard, was called into a packed meeting at the plant Monday morning – where workers learned that GM will cease production of the Chevrolet Cruze and indefinitely idle the plant beginning March 1 – the news packed a punch.

“[I was] shocked,” said Ripple. “I just stood there like a mummy, not moving.”

She tried to shield her youngest daughter from the news, but the 14-year-old couldn’t miss the nonstop news coverage or talk at her school.

“She’s very emotional,” said Ripple. Her daughter is worried about what will happen with the family’s finances; Ripple assures her they will survive.

Ripple knows this is true – but that doesn’t mean she knows what to do next. She’s weighing her options as March 1 looms. The uncertainty is hard, for her and other Lordstown workers who shared their stories this week.

But despite the grim news, many expressed hope that this isn’t the end of the plant. They’re staving off that thought, at least for now.

That would be too much.

“I’ll have hope until the very end,” Ripple said.

GM PRIDE

It wasn’t clear at the time, but General Motors came to the Valley at an opportune moment.

The plant’s first car – a Chevy Impala – rolled off the assembly line April 28, 1966. A little more than a decade later, the Valley would be brought to its knees by the collapse of the steel industry.

Over a several-year period, steel mills across the Valley shuttered, beginning with the sudden and devastating closure of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.’s Campbell Works. The announcement came Sept. 19, 1977 – a date now remembered as Black Monday. Just like that, thousands of jobs went up in smoke. Thousands more steel jobs disappeared in the next few years.

But at least the Valley had GM.

“That was all happening from 1977 to 1980, and at the same time, General Motors was expanding,” said Bill Lawson, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society. “They had opened the plant in 1966. They added a van assembly plant in the 1970s, and a metal fabricating plant after that.

“So just as the dust was starting to settle … you had 12,000 people employed in the Lordstown complex at General Motors. General Motors took on an even greater significance in the local economy,” Lawson said. “I think it’s critical that the plant was there and employing that many people.”

Employment at the plant has dropped since its peak in the 1980s – two years ago, there were about 4,500 workers there. Now, after two shift layoffs, there are about 1,500.

Through it all, the Valley has maintained a sense of pride in the Lordstown complex and the vehicles it produces, from the Impala to the Chevy Cavalier to the Cruze, which the plant started producing in 2010.

“Any time a community has an employer that large that creates products sold throughout the country and even across country boundaries, people identify with that product,” said Lawson. “You see that definitely in terms of brand loyalty for General Motors – not just the autoworkers and their families because of the discounts, but I think other people have bought GM because they considered it an important part of our economy.”

The shutdown of the plant, then, will have an impact beyond job and revenue losses.

“It will affect Trumbull County’s budget quite a bit – and yes, it’s going to have a very negative impact on our perception of ourself and our self-worth, much as [the collapse of the steel industry] did 35 years ago,” Lawson said.

INDIRECT IMPACT

The economic losses, too, will be significant, economists say.

Experts note that beyond the estimated 1,600 workers expected to be impacted at the plant and other local companies GM contracts with, the effect of the shutdown will ripple across other companies in the plant’s supply chain, into other industries and to communities beyond the Valley.

“The main concern is, beyond the 1,600 or so good-paying jobs that will potentially be lost at General Motors Lordstown, are the indirect jobs that will be affected,” said A.J. Sumell, an economics professor at Youngstown State University. “It’s what, in economics, we call the multiplier effect.”

So, how large is that multiplier?

“It’s particularly large with an employer like a car manufacturer, because you don’t have just the indirect jobs in the service industry, like restaurants and hotels and those businesses where the employees at GM Lordstown would have been spending money,” Sumell said. “There’s a greater impact because of all the jobs that are directly dependent on GM Lordstown – the suppliers of GM Lordstown.”

OTHER COMPANIES

Locally, there are several companies that are directly tied to the plant. Lordstown Seating Systems, which makes seats for the Cruze, reported it would lay off 83 employees earlier this year after GM announced it was cutting the Lordstown plant’s second shift.

A company representative declined to comment Friday on the impact of the plant halting production next year.

Jamestown Industries, which supplies the plant with front and rear bumper covers for the Cruze from its plant in Youngstown, said last week that recent attempts at diversification put the company in a better position to weather the idling of the plant.

“In 2015, we started the process to diversify to insulate ourselves from some of the variability that’s in the automotive industry,” said Lawrence Long, vice president of development for Jamestown. “So while there is uncertainty with regard to the Lordstown plant, we are confident that we will make it through this tough time.”

As for potential layoffs at Jamestown’s Youngstown plant, Long said, “We don’t know for sure how it will impact our workforce. We’re working hard to make sure we keep our workforce intact.”

Jose Arroyo, United Steelworkers business representative for this area, was not as optimistic about the future of Comprehensive Logistics/Source Providers in Austintown, which does logistics and warehousing for GM Lordstown.

With the previous layoffs at the plant, Source Providers laid off more than 350 people, Arroyo said; about 180 employees remain.

“Obviously, the prospects aren’t good, considering GM is Comprehensive Logistics’ only customer,” said Arroyo. “As General Motors goes, so goes Comprehensive Logistics [and subsidiaries] Source Providers and Falcon Transport. We’re extremely concerned, and we’re waiting to hear more from the company.”

Arroyo is also hearing concern from other companies whose workers he represents, such as aluminum and steel companies.

“Everybody is kind of holding their breath right now and hoping the talks with General Motors will end up in a new vehicle or retooling of the plant,” he said.

BUSINESS IMPACT

The impact will be felt by small businesses with less direct, but still significant, ties to the plant.

Our Place Diner in Lordstown is owned and operated by a family with deep GM Lordstown ties.

“My dad retired from GM after 30 years. My brother was laid off with the second shift. My husband was laid off with the third shift,” said Jackie Woodward, whose father owns the diner. “We are just like everybody in this town.”

The impact of the plant on their family’s business is significant.

“A lot of the business in this town relies on the traffic from General Motors and the companies that supply General Motors,” Woodward said. “There are not a lot of people who live in this town. So every business in this town relies on this.”

As for what the future holds for Our Place Diner, Woodward said they are taking it one day at a time and holding out hope.

“We have employees who rely on us. There are customers that won’t be impacted by GM, and you hope to stay open for everybody that needs a place to stop and eat,” she said.

As for how this ripple across the local economy will play out, Sumell said it will take years for the full effect to be realized. And as for what that impact will be, he cited research indicating that lost manufacturing jobs result in other job losses.

“Studies on similar situations have suggested that about three additional jobs [for every lost manufacturing job] would be lost over the course of years – which would put the total in the range of 7,000 or 8,000 jobs lost,” he said.

As a percentage of the Valley’s total workforce of about 220,000, that is fairly significant, he said – and he noted that it would accelerate a long-running trend of the Valley’s employment declining each year.

SILVER LINING?

The good news is that the Valley’s economy is more diversified today than it was back in the 1970s when the steel industry went under – and that trend likely will continue.

“We are much more diversified, which is an outcome of a sad situation – but it’s almost a silver lining of a sad situation,” Sumell said. “Because we’ve lost so many jobs in manufacturing already, we have a relative increase in jobs outside of manufacturing, which are generally less susceptible to massive layoffs.”

In the future, it’s more likely that employment will be spread across a variety of companies – for example, a brand-new, state-of-the-art energy center in Lordstown that cost $1 billion to build employs about 20 people, who earn good wages.

“We’ve become so much more automated, within manufacturing, that there is no single, dominant employer or single, dominant industry in most cities,” Sumell said. “The silver lining to that is, if you have [that] instead of just one dominant employer, or one dominant industry in a city, you have, naturally, a more diversified economy.”

He added: “We are in a better position, today, to deal with this type of blow than we were 40 years ago.”

Who that might not benefit is the GM Lordstown workers who are facing layoffs and an uncertain future. For many, it will be a question of retirement or moving or investing time and money into training for a new career. As Sumell notes, that’s often easier said than done.

But if there is any upshot, it may be that the Valley’s past economic woes have prepared it for this moment.

“We have been dealing with economic devastation for the past 40 years in this area,” Sumell said. “There is a sense of resiliency that is naturally built into our fabric in this community. So I’m confident we will be able to not just survive as a community, but to grow and to become a stronger community in the future.”

Continue reading Impact of GM Lordstown Shutdown Will Be Felt for Many Years →

Economy, Manufacturing, unemployment

Bernie Sanders on Keeping Jobs: Carrier Just Showed Corporations How to Beat Donald Trump

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We need a president who can stand up to big corporations, not fold to their demands.

By Bernie Sanders

Washington Post

December 1, 2016 – Today, about 1,000 Carrier workers and their families should be rejoicing. But the rest of our nation’s workers should be very nervous.

President-elect Donald Trump will reportedly announce a deal with United Technologies, the corporation that owns Carrier, that keeps less than 1,000 of the 2100 jobs in America that were previously scheduled to be transferred to Mexico. Let’s be clear: It is not good enough to save some of these jobs. Trump made a promise that he would save all of these jobs, and we cannot rest until an ironclad contract is signed to ensure that all of these workers are able to continue working in Indiana without having their pay or benefits slashed.

In exchange for allowing United Technologies to continue to offshore more than 1,000 jobs, Trump will reportedly give the company tax and regulatory favors that the corporation has sought. Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to “pay a damn tax.” He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut. Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad?

In essence, United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country.

Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States. Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives. Even corporations that weren’t thinking of offshoring jobs will most probably be re-evaluating their stance this morning. And who would pay for the high cost for tax cuts that go to the richest businessmen in America? The working class of America.

Let’s be clear. United Technologies is not going broke. Last year, it made a profit of $7.6 billion and received more than $6 billion in defense contracts. It has also received more than $50 million from the Export-Import Bank and very generous tax breaks. In 2014, United Technologies gave its former chief executive Louis Chenevert a golden parachute worth more than $172 million. Last year, the company’s five highest-paid executives made more than $50 million. The firm also spent $12 billion to inflate its stock price instead of using that money to invest in new plants and workers.

Does that sound like a company that deserves more corporate welfare from our government? Trump’s Band-Aid solution is only making the problem of wealth inequality in America even worse.

I said I would work with Trump if he was serious about the promises he made to members of the working class. But after running a campaign pledging to be tough on corporate America, Trump has hypocritically decided to do the exact opposite. He wants to treat corporate irresponsibility with kid gloves. The problem with our rigged economy is not that our policies have been too tough on corporations; it’s that we haven’t been tough enough.

We need to re-instill an ethic of corporate patriotism. We need to send a very loud and clear message to corporate America: The era of outsourcing is over. Instead of offshoring jobs, the time has come for you to start bringing good-paying jobs back to America.

If United Technologies or any other company wants to keep outsourcing decent-paying American jobs, those companies must pay an outsourcing tax equal to the amount of money it expects to save by moving factories to Mexico or other low-wage countries.  They should not receive federal contracts or other forms of corporate welfare.  They must pay back all of the tax breaks and other corporate welfare they have received from the federal government. And they must not be allowed to reward their executives with stock options, bonuses or golden parachutes for outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries. I will soon be introducing the Outsourcing Prevention Act, which will address exactly that.

If Donald Trump won’t stand up for America’s working class, we must.