Lordstown community resilient despite major plant closure
LORDSTOWN, OH – On Monday, November 26, 2018 at 9:30 in the morning the assembly line at Lordstown Assembly, where 16.3 million General Motors vehicles have been crafted since 1966, is still.
Rick Smith, Financial Secretary at United Auto Workers (U.A.W.), Local 1112, which represents worker’s in the private and public sector in Mahoning Valley, was hunting when he heard the news.
“I was out hunting that morning. And I knew nothing about it [the plant closing], and a buddy of mine texts me, who’s a reporter, and said, ‘Hey, what’s this announcement at the plant today?’ And, as I was typing, ‘not sure, waiting to hear.’ I got another response from him saying, ‘Oh no, just heard. Plant closing March 1st.”
General Motors Corporate had sent a letter to Lordstown Assembly, read to employees at an “All-hands meeting.” G.M. would be closing Lordstown Assembly. 1,400 jobs will be lost in Lordstown. A variety of options are available through U.A.W. to members and a portion of the plant’s workers have been offered relocation to other G.M. facilities. For 79 workers, relocation means moving to Wentzville, MO.
Smith says these employees are being mandated to relocate by G.M. Refusal to move will result in a loss of benefits provided by the company.
For employees represented by U.A.W, some relocation options are available. Some employees can request specific relocations to other G.M. facilities. For Christina Defelice, a production worker at Lordstown Assembly who was laid off in June, her relocation acceptance came as a letter.
Lordstown Assembly is part of greater cuts by G.M. across the U.S. and Canada which the company says is due to a shifting automobile marketplace.
“This was certainly, without a doubt, a difficult decision, which was driven by changing consumer demand,” said Dan Flores, the global manufacturing spokesperson for GM in an interview with the Tribune Chronicle. “We are discontinuing these passenger vehicles because consumers are not buying them.”
Lordstown Assembly manufactures the Chevy Cruze line, which is getting cut alongside the Chevy Impala and Malibu models.
Lordstown Assembly’s closure has some town residents worried.
Terry Armstrong, Lordstown School’s Superintendent, expressed concern about the school district’s ability to afford certain programs. Citing that some of Lordstown schools had been built with GM tax dollars and that participation fees for school sports and some fees to take certain classes had already been eliminated to deal with previous cuts to Lordstown Assembly.
The economic impact of a plant closing is something known all too well to residents of Lorain, Ohio. Home of Lorain Assembly, A Ford manufacturing plant which operated for 47 years from 1958 to 2005, and Two Steel facilities open and passed through various hands since 1895, that idled its workforce and closed functions in 2016.
In the 1980’s due to low gas prices and cheap, foreign-manufactured, steel; U.S. steel dramatically downsized its operations across the country. One of the facilities affected was Republic Steel, a set of three mills located on the south-east side of Lorain, Ohio. To residents of Lorain, the city is known by two names: Steel City and the International City.
Sandy Matakovich, Project Manager at Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems, was was born and raised in Lorain through the 70’s and 80’s with a father and father-in-law that worked in Lorain’s mills. Matakovich remembers what the city was like before Lorain’s mills started to shutter.
“Just the amount of diversity was what I loved about Lorain,” said Matakovich. With over 55 different nationalities living in Lorain the city, since the turn of the 20th century has been a hotbed of immigration and a melting pot of international culture. Matakovich remembers, as a kid, going to the city’s international festival, which started in 1967, and loving the experience of a multitudes of culture in her city.
But in the 80’s and through the decade after the steel mills started to downsize Lorain took a turn.
“Things just started going to hell,” said Matakovich. “I remember sitting on my porch on Friday night and watching gangs fight.”
Matakovich remembers that after the first set of mill closings many of her neighbors moved away. Unable to find work in Lorain her neighbors left in droves. The city, left without a high-wage workforce and a major revenue source, slowly started to lose the remainder of its manufacturing business. On January 7th, 2016, Republic Steel announced that it would idle the remainder of its Lorain steel mill. Since 2015 the plant had cut 663 jobs and would be laying off 200 more workers. In 2017, the idle parts of Lorain’s steel mill were permanently closed.
The job loss rate for American manufacturing is worse than it was during the Great Depression. According to an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation report, U.S. manufacturing jobs have plummeted by 27% since 2000.
“The most obvious impact [is] the people don’t have any income,” said Curtis Lockwood Reynolds, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Kent State University.
“The Ripple effects though are important. So, if people in the town don’t have income, they’re not going to be buying things in the town. They don’t go local shops.”
“So suddenly now, there’s less income flowing around the local economy.” Reynolds describes the economic impact as severe, “Anything that was being any income that was coming from income taxes–all those workers or property taxes on that property goes away. We use property taxes to fund schools, fire departments, police force[s].”
When asked about hope for cities like Lorain and Lordstown both Matakovich and Reynolds had similar answers. Saying that despite what residents may hope for they don’t believe that either of these cities will be able to recover.
“The Outlook is very pessimistic,” said Reynolds. “It doesn’t mean the town totally dies, but it’s hard to see how, you know, that any particular plan of action can actually change things around.” Reynolds continued, “I mean Lordstown is a Trumbull County. It is the one of the largest towns in Trumbull County and Trumbull County is one of the most struggling zones economies in Ohio.”
GM Plant Closing from Aliah Christeen on Vimeo.
Aliah: news package, set up and conducted all video interviews, and created “GM Employees Left at Plant” chart.
Tristan: I wrote the story, set up and conducted interviews with Curtis Reynolds, and Sandy Matakovich. Pulled data from a variety of at the time news articles, and constructed the post and formatting on WordPress. Got all headshots
The General Motors Lordstown Plant is officially set to close March 8th. See what’s coming for the future of Lordstown and how some of the workers are taking it in my story on https://t.co/CGmoFVgZuv. #SAVELORDSTOWN
— Aliah Keller (@AliahKeller) February 13, 2019
The General Motors Lordstown Plant is officially set to close March 8th. Learn about the impact of a plant shutting down on a manufacturing cities economy in my story on https://t.co/pqCHF9LypL #Lordstown #plantclosure
— Tristan Isham (@TristanIsham) February 13, 2019
