Monday, May 12, 2008
The economy of Greenville, Mich., will be devastated when a big refrigerator factory moves to Mexico. Now residents here are getting ready to express their fear and anger at the polls.
Feb 7, 2004 | The big election-year question for voters in this charming little town of 8,000 in north central Michigan was posed last year -- on Oct. 21, to be exact. That's when Electrolux announced that it would close the refrigerator factory that had been the mainstay of the local economy since 1877 and move its operations to Mexico. As a result, most of the plant's 2,700 workers would lose their jobs.
Until then, many local Democrats had been focused on the war in Iraq and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, explains the Rev. Vince Lavieri, chair of the Montcalm County Democratic Party. But after the announcement, that changed, Lavieri says. "Everyone began thinking: Where am I going to find work?"
With the economy and the "jobless recovery" topping concerns of voters nationwide, it's no surprise that Michigan Democrats heading to their caucus polling sites this Saturday are overwhelmingly focused on their economic future. After all, Michigan is tied with Oregon for the second highest unemployment rate (7.2 percent, compared with 5.7 percent nationally), and the state has lost more than 300,000 jobs -- including nearly 200,000 in its crucial manufacturing sector -- over the past three years. This is a huge reversal from the late 1990s, when Michigan was actually adding substantial numbers of highly skilled, decently paid manufacturing jobs, and its jobless rate was well below the national average.
But nowhere in Michigan does the economic future feel more uncertain than in Greenville. In most people's minds, the jobs question is inextricably linked with two other issues -- healthcare and globalization. "The No. 1 issue is jobs: How do we create real jobs in this country that can support a family," said Denise Cadreau, director of the state AFL-CIO's political operations. "No. 2 is trade. Where do the candidates stand? They have to be for fair trade. Even the manufacturing unions realize globalization is here ... People also want something on healthcare, some kind of national healthcare."
For many, the fear of joining the 44 million Americans without health insurance is even more frightening than the prospect of trying to earn a living by working part-time at the local Meijer superstore. At least Meijer's workforce is unionized. But even that option is growing less secure. The company is laying off employees and preparing for competition from a new, nonunion, low-wage Wal-Mart coming to Greenville.
"The biggest fear people have isn't terrorists," says Don Pellow, a full-bearded, burly former president of the main United Auto Workers union local at the Electrolux plant. "The terror is that they won't have medical care, not getting blown up in a taxi by an Iraqi."
In a town where generations of families have worked at the same plant, with the men looking forward to some days off for deer season in the fall almost as much as for Christmas break, people often feel remote from the tribulations of the rest of the world. But the plant closing by the big multinational corporation "suddenly brought the world home," Lavieri said, making acronyms like "NAFTA" and the "WTO" come alive.
Greenville Mayor Lloyd Walker, a Republican like the majority of people in the county, led an effort by local notables from business, churches, professions and organized labor, including UAW officials, to put together a package that would save the plant. It was a lucrative deal for the company: $30 million a year in concessions from union workers. No state or local taxes for 20 years. The promise of a highly efficient new factory that the company could lease to own.
The community's package would save Electrolux $74 million a year, without the risks and costs of moving and losing a skilled, highly productive workforce, close to the $81 million a year that managers said they could save by moving to Mexico. And union leaders, using data from the company, estimate that it will cost $250 million to build the new factory.
But a little more than two weeks ago, Electrolux nixed the deal, confirming that the primary factory making many famous refrigerator brands --including Frigidaire, Kelvinator, Tappan, White-Westinghouse and many Kenmore models -- will leave Greenville. The target date for closure is November 2005, when the current union contract expires.
It's not surprising that workers at the plant who now make $15.25 an hour (plus benefits that cost $5.75 an hour) think it's unfair that they have to compete with workers making $1.57 an hour (plus $1.03 in benefits) in Juarez, Mexico, where their plant is likely to be relocated. "We couldn't understand how the company could walk away from a profitable plant and a proven workforce that could build high-quality refrigerators," chief union steward Dan Bissell said.
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