Please don’t go to Mexico
The evening after Electrolux announced it will close its refrigerator plant in Greenville, Mich., to start production in Mexico, UAW Local 137 member Carol Moore explained the situation to her 16-year-old daughter, Amanda.
“I wanted to tell my kids instead of them hearing it on the news,” said Moore. “But they heard it on the radio that morning before school.”
Moore didn’t discuss it with her younger children, 7-year-old Alexandra (“Ali”) and 11/2-year-old twins Adam and Arabella.
But little pitchers have big ears.
The next morning Moore found a note from Ali stuck to the refrigerator on a piece of notebook paper: “Electrolux, Please don’t go to Mexico. I don’t want a lot of people to loose their jobs. Just try to change your mind. How would you like it if you were my mom, Carol More and you lost your job? Your friend, Ali.”
“I guess they pay attention to more than what you think,” said Moore, who took the note to work and showed it to co-workers. “She is sure she can save our jobs by just sending this to Electrolux.”
It’s a heart-rending message, but corporations aren’t about heart, they’re about profits. In October the Swedish-based maker of home appliances told the union it plans to close the plant in 2005. The UAW went into intense negotiations in an attempt to save the 2,700 jobs at stake. The city of Greenville, population 8,000, and Gov. Jennifer Granholm got involved with numerous proposals to keep the plant open.
“It was a roller-coaster ride for us on the bargaining committee,” said Terry Rettig, a 25-year member of Local 137. “It was just up and down, up and down. ... Everything they brought up, we brought back a proposal on it that was satisfactory. Next thing you know they’d say, ‘Well it looks pretty good.’ And we’d think maybe there’s a chance of saving this plant, and the next day they come up with something else.”
“You’d tear down this fence and all of a sudden you go 10 feet and here’s another fence to jump over,” said 23-year member David Doolittle, also on the bargaining committee.
In the end, the company was offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars that included free land and a new building from the city, and tax breaks and other incentives from the state.
“Right up until the last day, the last hour, it was like that,” said Dan Bissel, a 20-year member and bargaining committee member. “We’d give a proposal that we solved a problem and put it in writing that we guaranteed it.”
But Electrolux said no. The company wanted to recoup $81 million in the first year.
“It’s a real tragedy that the membership of UAW Locals 137 and 1554 have to lose their jobs because of a decision by a corporate board of directors whose only impact will be that they will make more money when the move is completed to Mexico,” said Region 1D Director Don Oetman. Local 137 represents production workers and Local 1554 represents clerical workers.
Hard economic lessons
It is a tough decision for a community that will be devastated when its largest employer goes away. Estimates of how many jobs will be lost in Greenville and surrounding communities go as high as 8,000 because a few plants that supply Electrolux will close, and there will be less spending money in circulation and some people will have to move away to find work.
Greenville is small western Michigan town in an area known for conservatism. Downtown is about four blocks long and there are already a couple of empty storefronts. Call the mayor’s office and the receptionist tells you to call him at his other job.
But it’s a community that’s learned hard economic lessons in recent months. Electrolux is moving to Mexico where it will pay workers about 10 percent of the $13 to $15 an hour that workers in Greenville make. Federal Mogul, where UAW Locals 2017 and 1158 members make parts for Ford Motor Co., has threatened to close unless the union makes concessions.
“They want $7 million in concessions from the workers over four years,” said Oetman of Federal Mogul, “and that doesn’t include what they’re seeking from the city.”
The biggest new job possibility around is a Wal-Mart scheduled to open at the mall just outside of town. Wal-Mart — where low wages are paid, anti-union sentiments rule and goods mostly imported from China are sold. It’ll kill what’s left of downtown.
NAFTA hits heartland
“We’ve got to get rid of NAFTA,” said bargaining committee member Kitty Rogers, a 26-year Electrolux veteran.
Everyone in Greenville understands that now. Because of NAFTA, Electrolux can move to Mexico, pay low wages and export its product back into the United States with no tariff to drive the price up.
“Next year we have to switch over to a new foam that’s environmentally friendly,” said Doolittle. “It’s going to bring our costs up $8 a unit. When they go down to Mexico they don’t have to use this foam down there, but they can still sell it back to the United States.”
“That’s pathetic,” said Jim Hoisington, Local 137 vice president. “They think, ‘Well we can’t get away with it here but we can go across the border and dump it right in their back yard.’ ”
“Most of the businesses in town have stepped up and offered us discounts,” said Hoisington. “We’ve been getting a lot of support.”
But how much can there be? Three building projects slated for Greenville have been canceled since the announced plant closing. The entire town is so stirred up that Mayor Lloyd Walker, a lifelong Republican in his 70s, has declared on national television that he will vote Democratic in the next election so that something can be done about NAFTA.
The owner of one downtown restaurant has produced a unique paper placemat for his tables. At the top it reads: “QUESTIONS WE SHOULD ASK OUR LEGISLATORS.” The first question is: “If NAFTA and other unfair trade policies are good ... who are they good for?”
There is a place at the bottom of the mat to sign your name. The restaurant owner, Mike Huckleberry, sends them to Republican Congressman Dave Camp, the local representative and NAFTA supporter.
On a map of the state of Michigan, Greenville doesn’t stand out. Get
off I-96 and go north to highway 57; it’s about a 35-minute drive northwest
of Grand Rapids. As you enter town, a sign declares Greenville the home of
the Danish festival. Representatives of media outlets from across the United
States have found their way there. Greenville has become a symbol of the job
loss that is draining our industrial base, even as President Bush claims the
economy is
improving.
Where do you turn?
Family helps family and neighbors help neighbors, but how can you help when you don’t have anything either? Numerous husbands and wives both work at Electrolux. During a break from safety training during second shift, Kevin Gibson, who’s worked at Electrolux 11/2 years, says his wife, two sisters and his son have all worked there about three years.
“A lot of people have a lot more family than I do,” Gibson says. “I think this community is going to fall apart, Greenville and the surrounding area.”
Gibson, who has a welding shop in his barn, figures he’ll probably end up leaving the area. But in the meantime he’s got a job to do and safety training can make a difference in the next year and a half.
“What you’re learning here you can take with you anywhere,” said safety committee member Scott Horn, during the confined space safety training. “If you can save one life, it makes a difference. If you go to a nonunion plant, you’ll be able to bring safety procedures with you. Maybe help organize them.”
These workers are proud of what they do, regardless of what’s thrown at them. And they keep going to work. In fact, the plant is hiring 250 more employees to make production until the shutdown.
“Even after they came in and made the first announcement in October, a lot of people were devastated and they were allowed to go home if they needed to,” said Bissel, whose wife also works at Electrolux. “But most people went right back to work. Even the day they made the final announcement that they’re going to close the plant, they took the people off the line and told them. People went back to work and we still exceeded our normal 6,000 a day running rate. And we achieved the highest quality product that we’ve ever run the last couple of years.”
A flier hanging in the union hall and posted around town tells the tale. At the top its reads: “Work Wanted” in big letters. It goes on to describe the workforce as “Highly Skilled” and “Self Motivated,” and looking for a “Loyal Employer that wants to stay and Manufacture in America.”
These were loyal employees who worked hard and now, through no fault of their own, have had the rug pulled out from under them.
“Some of these people have children or spouses who require medical treatment or prescriptions or whatever and all of a sudden they are going to be faced with no insurance. That’s the hard part,” said Rettig. “Some people might be able to retire early and get out of here but some people they’re just going to be devastated. ... You might sell your truck to help out and then you sell whatever to help out, but sooner or later you’re going to run out of things to sell.”
Sending a message
“The biggest disappointing thing for me to learn was we have all these grants, all these provisions for when we lose our jobs to overseas or to Mexico, but there’s no provisions in place to keep the jobs from going,” said Doolittle. “So it’s kind of like we’re trying to paddle across a lake after the boat sank. It gets really frustrating to me that everything is there for afterward and nothing there to prevent it.”
If there’s any good to come of all this, it’s that the message of the damage done by NAFTA and resistance to other free-trade agreements such as FTAA is being shouted out by the people of Greenville.
That message will get louder on March 27 and 28, when the AFL-CIO Working Families National Bus Tour stops in Greenville. The bus will be carrying a worker from each state who has been affected by the job crisis. Each of them will stay overnight at the home of an Electrolux worker. On Sunday morning there will be a pancake breakfast and American jobs rally supporting Electrolux workers at Greenville High School. The tour will arrive March 31 in Washington, D.C., to take a message to the White House.
Electrolux workers have already sent a message there. On March 5, Doolittle and Marcella Ort gave statements at a rally and hearing by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on the outsourcing of jobs.
“So our jobs are moving to Mexico because the other American manufacturing jobs that went south of the border are now moving to China. My guess is that before long there won’t be a decent manufacturing job left in the U.S.,” said Doolittle.
“It is agonizing for all of us at Electrolux and for our families. It is like a stomachache that won’t go away.”
Local
137 Vice President Jim Hoisington says local businesses are helping out Electrolux
workers by offering discounts.
The
Electrolux move to Mexico will affect more than its 2,700 workers and their
families. It’s estimated that the ripple effect could kill off as many
as 8,000 jobs in the Greenville area.
Ali's
letter to Electrolux.
Carol
Moore and her children, Amanda, 16; year-old twins Arabella and Adam, and
Ali, 7.
