Posted on 08/24/2003 12:07:19 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
The nation's economic recession may have officially ended in November 2001, but hard times are far from over for thousands of Wisconsin residents whose jobs continue to disappear, especially in the hard-hit manufacturing sector.
Factories across the state have eliminated some 80,000 jobs since 2000. That's more than the entire population of Eau Claire.
Wisconsin's unemployment rate for July, not adjusted for seasonal fluctuation, is 5.5 percent, up from 5.3 percent a year ago. Manufacturing jobs, at 514,400 in June, are down 13,300 from 527,700 in the state in June 2002, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.
A state economist said he doesn't think we've seen the end of it.
"We're in a very, very flat economy. We have been, for basically three years," said Terry Ludeman, chief of local workforce planning for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development in Madison.
"Our manufacturing is still very, very low," Ludeman said. "I would say it has not even bottomed out yet."
Even companies producing technology - touted by some as a way to improve the state's economy and raise salaries - are slashing jobs.
The situation has reached "crisis proportions," warned state labor leader David Newby.
"Plant closings and layoffs are simply continuing at a constant pace," said Newby, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, in Milwaukee. When past recessions have abated, hiring resumed. But this time, scores of factories have shut their doors for good, canceling thousands of jobs.
"They're gone and they're not coming back," Newby said.
At Zalk Josephs Fabricators in Stoughton, about half of the company's 85 employees who have been off the job over the course of the summer are lucky: Most of them will be called back to work in the next few weeks.
It's the first significant layoff in years for Zalk Josephs, which makes structural steel for major building projects around the Midwest and for the auto industry. "Right now, because of the overall state of our economy, you don't see a lot of high-rise buildings going up in Chicago," said Gerald Renz, president.
The slowdown began to affect his company about 12 months ago. While the company has secured enough contracts to bring most employees back, Renz doesn't expect things to pick up until the second half of 2004 a year from now.
"In our particular industry, we're a little late going into a recession, but unfortunately, we're also late coming out of a recession," he said.
To be sure, there are some pockets of the state, some types of industries, that appear to be faring better than others. But they are the exception, not the rule.
Southeastern Wisconsin has been particularly hurt by industrial machine plants that have closed or pared staff, but no part of the state and no industry seems to have been spared.
Factory closings in recent months have ranged from Mirro cookware in Manitowoc, with 882 employees, to Mason Shoe in Chippewa Falls, with 140 employees. Snap-on will close a tool-making factory in Kenosha by early next year, eliminating 290 jobs, while Springs Window Fashions will shutter a Wausau factory, where 140 people make blinds and shades.
"We are in serious, serious trouble," Newby said, and people just don't seem to realize it."
William R. Hall, Milwaukee, got a gold watch and a full pension for 30 years of service at Tower Automotive before his job as an assembler ended July 1. Tower, formerly A.O. Smith, once had as many as 6,700 employees building steel frames for vehicles. Now it is down to about 500. Most of the work has been transferred to Canada and Mexico; some has gone to Ohio.
"They fed us a line," promising to keep jobs if the plant became more efficient, said Hall. "But how could you compete against the rate of exchange?"
Hall, 52, has been watching for other factory jobs. "There isn't a whole lot there," he said, especially at $17 an hour plus benefits, as he was getting at Tower. He wants to go to technical school to train for the heating and air conditioning trade.
"I want something that nobody can take away from me now," Hall said.
In Milwaukee County, the HIRE (Help in Reemployment) Center, which assists workers who have lost their jobs through corporate downsizing, served abut 2,800 people last year. That's a 75 percent jump from the 1,600 people the center served three years ago.
"The structural damage being done now to manufacturing is profound," said center manager Roger Hinkle.
Although on average, manufacturing wages have risen, they have not increased as rapidly as inflation, and when jobs at the higher end of the scale are lost, it can be difficult for workers to find alternatives that pay as well. In January, average hourly earnings in the manufacturing sector were $16.01 statewide, up 1.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. During 2002, the Consumer Price Index rose 2.4 percent.
Many companies are reducing the number of higher-paid, white-collar employees as well as the line workers at their plants. Miller Brewing recently said it will trim 200 jobs, mainly at its corporate headquarters in Milwaukee. Battery company Rayovac Corp. shed about 40 white-collar jobs at its Madison headquarters and technical center this spring even as it closed its Madison and Middleton packaging and distribution centers, ending 290 jobs at those locations.
"We've definitely seen it hitting middle management, white-collar jobs," said Eric Grosso, state labor economist with the Department of Workforce Development in Madison. "No one's immune."
Some companies say foreign competition - especially from China and other far East countries - is a major factor in Wisconsin's job losses.
Planar Systems in Lake Mills is one place where the China factor has had an impact. The plant, which had as many as 300 employees in 1999, was down to its last couple of workers by mid-August, moving out the final machines.
Formerly Standish Industries, the factory made liquid crystal display components capable of broad temperature ranges for use in gasoline pumps, said Stewart Clark, investor relations director for Planar, the Beaverton, Ore. company that bought the plant in 1997.
"It's not a simple thing to make," Clark said. "The pumps have to operate in Phoenix in the summer and Fairbanks in the winter and that's a pretty big range."
For a while, Planar's Lake Mills factory made about 90 percent of the nation's gas pump digits, he said. That means, when you filled your car's tank, the flying dollar and gallon readouts were likely produced about 25 miles east of Madison.
But they were black and white. "The world wants full color," Clark said. So, Planar formed a partnership with a company in China, Truly Electronics. Eventually, most of the parts once made in Wisconsin were produced in China, instead.
"It's all about product cost and for a combination of reasons, it's far less costly for those products to be produced offshore," Clark said.
Plexus Corp. has two facilities of its own in Asia, one in Mexico and another in Britain but that still didn't stop the Neenah contract electronics manufacturer from making significant cuts this year.
With clients that include Lucent and Cisco Systems, GE Medical and Siemens Medical, Plexus sales topped $1 billion in 2001, a dramatic jump from the company's $443 million in sales, just two years earlier in 1999. Expecting the momentum to continue, Plexus went on an acquisition spree.
"The company was being built up to be able to handle a certain level of volume," Kristian Talvitie, director of strategic marketing and communications, said. "We were, in many of our facilities, bursting at the seams."
But in 2002, the impact of the sluggish national economy hit. The telecommunications industry already was sharply lower; then, the electronics manufacturing industry dipped.
"All of our customers stopped having customers," Talvitie said. Revenues were $884 million, the company's second highest total, but its infrastructure had grown to handle nearly 50 percent more than that. So Plexus decided to close its original building in Neenah and facilities in Minneapolis, San Diego and Kentucky.
Since 2001, Plexus has pared its staff of 6,300 employees to 4,600 worldwide and from about 2,000 to 1,700 in Wisconsin. After two years of net losses, the company hopes its 2004 fiscal year will be back in the black, Talvitie said.
Companies that manufacture industrial machinery - for a long time, one of Wisconsin's strengths - will likely take longer to recover.
"We have so many tool and die makers on long-term layoffs," said Hinkle, of Milwaukee's job center for dislocated workers. "Three years ago, there was an employment shortage in that area."
John Callahan's former coworkers at Interstate Drop Forge in Milwaukee know that all too well. The plant made parts for oil wells, Air Force planes, submarines and tractors. Production ended there late last year and was shifted to Navasota, Texas, near Houston.
Callahan, a hammer operator and forge press operator who worked at the plant for 31 years, said the Milwaukee tool and die makers haven't found new jobs. "They devoted five or six years to get a journeyman sheepskin and they can't find work."
Callahan, 54, of Germantown, said he'll build on past college credits and go after an associate degree in industrial engineering or a similar white collar field.
"When the manufacturing base is done, you've got to look for something else," Callahan said. "The day of the smokestacks, I think, is really gone. At least, for this area."
Question 1: Who was the President that signed NAFTA?
Answer 1: Scumbag
Question 2: Which party had the majority when NAFTA was passed by congress?
Answer 2: The demChiComCrim-o-Rat party.
What is disturbing is that the pubbies believe that NAFTA is the one time in history that the liberal democrats did something right. I believe the libs saw it as another chance to destroy the middle class/ America.
I loathe both political Parties BTW. Now on to..
"We've definitely seen it hitting middle management, white-collar jobs," said Eric Grosso, state labor economist with the Department of Workforce Development in Madison. "No one's immune."
"No one's immune." That definitely knocks the kick out of the schadenfreude high some get creeping slowly past and gawking at the shattered wrecks of former IT workers' lives. Now don't it? Seriously, a year ago it was common to see "Hee, hee. Serves 'em right. If the Indians can do a better job for less money that's where we need to send the work. Hee, hee."
Not to worry, though. It's all a doom-and-gloomer and media lie. The market's up! Who needs recurring consumer demands that paychecks bring anyway? If you think the stores are crowed now just imagine what it would like if. . . .
BTW, if the chi-coms trust Sen. Feinstein what does that say about them? :)
Never really got an answer to that question. And ost of then were layout in one budget crunch or an other.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.