After 30 years at a factory making truck parts, Jeffrey Evans was earning $14.55 an hour in what he called “one of the better-paying jobs in the area.”
Wearing a Harley-Davidson cap, a bittersweet reminder of crushed dreams, he recently described how astonished and betrayed he felt when the plant was shut down in August after a labor dispute. Despite sporadic construction work, Mr. Evans has seen his income reduced by half.
So he was astonished yet again to find himself, at age 49, selling off his cherished Harley and most of his apartment furniture and moving in with his mother.
Middle-aged men moving in with parents, wives taking two jobs, veteran workers taking overnight shifts at half their former pay, families moving West ”” these are signs of the turmoil and stresses emerging in the little towns and backwoods mobile homes of southeast Ohio, where dozens of factories and several coal mines have closed over the last decade, and small businesses are giving way to big-box retailers and fast-food outlets.
Here, where the northern swells of the Appalachians lap the southern fringe of the Rust Belt, thousands of people who long had tough but sustainable lives are being wrenched into the working poor.
[blockquote] If you don’t work at Wal-Mart, the only job you can get around here is in fast food. [/blockquote] I have just been the beneficiary of one of the fallouts of depopulation here just across the border in PA: falling rent rates.
In coastal Mississipi, which I just left, there are plenty of jobs but few affordable place to live (tripled rent rates). Here in the Ambridge area there are plenty of affordable places to live, but few well-paying jobs.
This is a painful story to read, but I have to point out irony in the following:
Meridian Automotive is an aftermarket auto parts supplier, and like other auto parts suppliers in the United States, has been squeezed dry by a run-up of material input costs. (Meridian recently entered and then emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.) One of the major input materials used by Meridian is steel, which has seen an extraordinary increase in value since the earlier part of this decade. Steel prices in the United States have been kept extremely high in part due to special tariff protections imposed by the government. (The article is wrong suggesting that the steel industry sector in the United States is distressed. To the contrary, the steel industry is enjoying record prices and profits.) One of the interested parties that has regularly petitioned the government to impose and maintain the high tariffs is–you guessed it–the United Steelworkers, the same union that represented the workers at Meridian’s Jackson OH plant. If the former workers at that plant want to point fingers at who is responsible for their predicament, part of the blame must be borne by the union that purported to represent them.
[blockquote] The article is wrong suggesting that the steel industry sector in the United States is distressed. To the contrary, the steel industry is enjoying record prices and profits. [/blockquote] After 50 years of refusing to reinvest in its steel mills, and producing steel in aging, antiquated mills, the steel industry closed its doors across the rust belt. I call that distress. The only way you can not call it distress is to write off the whole populations that are distressed and say they are not part of the problem.
The fact that the steel industry is enjoying record profits reflects what can be done when an investment is made in modern processing plants — along with abandoning its prior work force.
No distress? Let me invite you to a [url=http://resurrectiongulfcoast.blogspot.com/2007/09/great-leap-ahead-to-aliquippa.html]tour of Aliquippa[/url]!
Indeed, Br_er Rabbit. I was born and raised in Sharon, PA; dad was a steelworker. It broke my parents’ hearts when I moved away after I graduated from college, but what could I do? I assured my mother that if she heard of a good-paying job opening in the area, I’d apply. That never happened.
There’s another part of this story the Times didn’t report — the taxes and cost of living (outside of housing) are really quite high! That always astonished me when I’d go back to visit and went grocery shopping for mom. Groceries, gasoline, utilities — all MUCH higher than in the South. Mom paid nearly as much in property taxes for her small two-bedroom bungalow as I did for my much larger home. There’s a state income tax and inheritance tax, too. Tax, tax, tax on these beleaguered people! It didn’t matter which political party was in charge. When businesses and people flee, those remaining are stuck with making up the difference in revenue.
My heart aches for that area.
Sorry–I think I misstated my point above. The steel industry itself is going strong–commanding very high prices and enjoying robust profits, which is a striking turnaround from even just five years ago. Unfortunately, as the industry consolidated and eliminated redundant and uneconomical production assets, many communities like Aliquippa and Sharon suffered. (I believe Aliquippa had Jones & Laughlin, which shut in the 1980s, and Sharon Steel in Sharon finally shut down about 10 years ago.) One problem that the smaller integrated mills faced is the extremely high cost of running a blast furnace, which must be on all the time (turning it off requires re-lining, which is expensive and time-consuming), and the environmental compliance costs of a blast furnace are enormous. Once minimills, which use electric furnaces to make steel from scrap, became economical, there was no longer any reason to locate mills close to the coal beds in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The mills could be located elsewhere, like the South, where the workforce is much less expensive.
In contrast to the steel sector, the auto parts sector is pretty much suffering from top to bottom, being squeezed by high input costs and import competition, and unable to raise prices due to the market power of the auto producers. You don’t want to be a worker or an executive in that industry right now.
Growing up in NE Ohio during the late ’70s and early ’80s, it was heartbreaking to see the majority of families around us losing their jobs due to the steel collapse. It left a mark that has stayed with me my entire life. My heart goes out to the people in SE Ohio and similar areas.