Posted on 08/02/2004 5:34:00 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
LEWISTOWN - Miranda Frymyer waits in front of the Armed Forces Recruiting Center for the shuttle bus to drive her to boot camp. She seems neither happy nor sad, but resigned.
The 18-year-old, sporting a blue Grateful Dead teddy bear tattoo on her chest, is surrounded by her mother, her stepmother, her father, her sister, her boyfriend and several family friends, none of whom want her to join the Army.
"We're having this war," her mother, Lisa Courtney, says. "I do not want my daughter going. I'm here to cry."
For Frymyer, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem like a better option than the losing battle for decent jobs in Lewistown, where the population is falling, unemployment is among the highest in the state, and heroin is the escapist drug of choice among some of her peers.
"I want to make something out of my life," Frymyer says, crossing her arms. "There's nothing here."
On that, her mother agrees.
"I don't want her to be like me. I was a mom at 16, and I'm in a dead-end job," Courtney says, wearing a white T-shirt that carries the warning, "Staring won't make me like you more."
Even dead-end jobs are scarce in Lewistown, despite the fact fewer people are sticking around to apply for them.
Over four decades, the population in the borough -- the Mifflin County seat -- has slipped 29 percent, to 8,998 in 2000, from 12,640 in 1960. Mifflin County's unemployment rate jumped from an annual average of 4.5 percent in 2000 to 7.5 percent in 2003 and is hovering at more than 8 percent this year, well above the 3.5 percent rate in the Harrisburg region and the state average of 6.1 percent.
A series of plant closings over six months -- some due to the transfer of jobs to other countries -- has made a bad situation worse.
Series of closings:
Depending on who is talking, outsourcing is either a natural part of free trade in a global economy or a new way of describing the "great sucking sound" of U.S. jobs going abroad, as Ross Perot warned during his presidential bid in 1992. If Perot needs a vacant building from which to say "I told you so," Lewistown has plenty.
In February, Lear Corp. shut its Lewistown plant, which made automotive carpeting, leaving 308 employees out of work. Lear, which operates plants in 34 countries, transferred the work that was done at Lewistown to other places, primarily Canada. The company gave some of its employees the option of working at other Lear facilities, including plants in Carlisle and Virginia, but there were few takers.
The same month, Standard Steel, founded in 1795 and instrumental to the railroad industry in the 1800s, closed its ring mill, where locomotive wheels were made. One of 49 U.S. steel companies that have declared bankruptcy since 1997, Standard Steel struggles with overseas competition, and while it continues to operate in the Lewistown area, 109 workers lost their jobs at the ring mill.
Mann Edge Tool Co., an ax-and-hammer factory that opened in the late 1800s and employed as many as 350 people 20 years ago, closed its Water Street plant in September, idling the remaining 49 workers. Before the closing, the business was purchased by Delaware-based Collins Tool Co., a subsidiary of Truper Herramientas in Mexico.
Collins Tool continues to operate in the Mifflin County Industrial Development Corp. plaza, but the work once done at the ax forge plant on Water Street is done overseas.
Last November, Guardian Industries, a glass manufacturer, closed its Lewistown plant, laid off 69 workers and sent the jobs to Mexico.
No help nearby:
Neighboring counties offer little respite for Lewistown residents.
Six plants in Centre County and one in Huntingdon County closed during the past year, because of either foreign competition or the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, says Cynthia Spencer, counselor at Lewistown CareerLink. She says another plant in Lewistown may downsize this summer, when some of the 200 jobs will be sent to India.
Twice a week, a dozen Lewistown residents, many of whom worked at Lear and Mann Edge, drive an hour to Harrisburg to take taxpayer-financed retraining courses at Harrisburg Area Community College. There, they are learning how to repair heating and air-conditioning systems.
The courses and extended unemployment compensation are part of the Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits that the displaced workers receive from the state Department of Labor and Industry and the U.S. Department of Labor.
The benefits, awarded to workers who lose their jobs as a result of outsourcing and international trade, do little to mask the damage to this once-thriving manufacturing town.
"Lewistown is decimated," says Bill Thompson, an instructor at HACC's Harrisburg campus. "Businesses are shutting down or cutting back."
Making ends meet:
When not commuting and learning, the students -- mostly middle-age white men with families to support -- try to make ends meet by painting houses, fixing cars, cutting grass and doing other odd jobs, Thompson says.
And on the rare occasion when full-time jobs open, a feeding frenzy ensues. At a recent daylong job fair at Trinity Packaging in Lewistown, more than 120 people showed up on a 90-degree weekday to apply for 35 jobs.
"We had to start turning people away at 5:30, so I'm sure there would have been more," says Lisa Woodruff, human resources manager at Trinity, where workers stuff plastic bags into boxes. "Our job fairs usually attract 50 to 60 [applicants], tops."
One applicant, Austin Shank, 19, went to the job fair because he's tired of working at Dairy Queen near his home in Reedsville. Of the eight children in the Shank family, three work for the ice cream chain, says Austin's mother, Martha Shank, as she sits on Trinity's front lawn and watches her son fill out his application.
"I have another son who's been looking for a job for two years, and he has a master's degree," Martha Shank says. "The jobs he's looking for ain't here. He's thinking of going into the Navy."
Austin is thinking of someplace other than Lewistown.
"If I can get a good enough job somewhere, I'll leave," he says.
Many people who get jobs at Trinity don't stay long, says Eric Goss, 28, who has worked at the plant for five years.
"A lot of people don't last more than a couple of hours," Goss says during a break. "Most don't last more than a week. It's noisy, and it's 20 degrees hotter than it is outside. With 100 percent humidity."
Goss says he has little choice but to weather the conditions. He's paid at top scale, $12.13 an hour, or $25,200 a year.
"Ain't too bad," Goss says. "Can't find anything else."
That's essentially the same reason Nicholas Seaholtz, 26, is filling out his application in his parked car. He drove to the job fair with his girlfriend, Ashley Druckemiller, 18, from their nearby hometown of Milroy. They left their infant son, Cole, in the care of his grandparents.
"I'll take whatever I can get, really," Seaholtz says. "It really doesn't matter as long as I can get a job."
Seaholtz says he has applied at 15 places since December, when he lost his job as a heavy-equipment operator.
"I think it's about time to move out of this state," he says. "Go out West. Down South. That's what it's coming to."
Rob Postal, president of the Mifflin County Industrial Development Corp., shares Seaholtz's frustration.
"I can understand the long-term benefit of outsourcing," Postal says. "But we don't have an adjustment for the short-term problems that are occurring. I understand that cheaper labor helps companies, but short-term, we're hurting."
Unlike other parts of Pennsylvania, including Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, "we don't have the service and government jobs to pick up the slack from the manufacturing losses," Postal says. "We're not replacing these jobs lost in manufacturing with other jobs. Those jobs that do come, the wages are not going to be the same."
Feeling the pain:
Other businesses in town are experiencing the trickle-down effect of outsourcing, consolidation and downsizing.
Revenue at Lewistown Florist is down 20 percent from a year ago, owner Mark Lawson says. He describes the current economic slump as the worst he's seen in the 24 years he has run the store.
"It's a lack of jobs," Lawson says. "People have no money to spend, and it's not getting better. Everybody feels it."
The opening of a Wal-Mart just outside Lewistown a decade ago didn't help matters, Lawson says, because it "also took business away" from downtown merchants.
"We're getting by," Lawson says while standing behind the counter of his shop, where he's surrounded by colorful flower arrangements and a caged bird but no customers. "Hopefully, something will turn around here."
Business is only slightly better at Henry's Subs & Suds, where two patrons sip beers in the otherwise empty bar.
"It's been like this for a while now," bartender Denise Fultz says. "Every week it gets worse. There's nothing in this town, and the people who are here don't have money."
Every once in awhile, road-construction crews who live outside of Lewistown stop in for beers after working on the highway widening project at routes 322 and 22.
Those workers brighten the atmosphere, Fultz says. "They come in, carry on and talk about sex."
When local residents do stop in, the conversations are "basically about how bad it sucks here," she says.
Gerald Hummel, president of the Greater Lewistown Corp., sees the town as half-full, not half-empty. He points to the highway expansion and the presence of Wal-Mart, or "Wally World," as the locals call it, as examples of growth, not decay, and says the region's access to rail service can attract business.
"The core stuff is here," Hummel says. "What isn't here is anybody's attention" to the area's potential.
Hummel's office is one of several county offices in the space formerly occupied by a Danks department store, which closed eight years ago. The 54,000-square-foot building had been vacant until four years ago.
The recent spate of plant closings follows years of other departures. Rite Aid moved out of town, as did three discount stores -- Murphy's, Kresge's and McCrory's. The Bon-Ton is still in town, Hummel says with pride.
But Hummel doesn't try to hide the obvious, that losses outweigh the gains in Lewistown. He escorts a visitor outside and glances across the parking lot at the latest reminder of that imbalance, the idled Mann Edge Tool building.
"What's happened here has taken place over so many years, it does not strike anyone as being dramatic," he says.
Plenty of volunteers:
Back at the recruiting center, Army Sgt. Joshua Ochs, 31, has no trouble finding volunteers, despite the rising death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"They know we're capable of doing more for them than Lewistown can," Ochs says while waiting with his latest recruits for the shuttle bus.
Some people join because "they just want to do their part" for the country, says Ochs, who speaks in short, crisp sentences and wears a closely cropped crewcut. Others join because "there's nothing to do in this town," he says.
The shuttle pulls up, and Frymyer lingers in a long group hug with her family members, who are crying.
Ochs, standing to the side, ends the goodbyes.
"Let's go," he says.
As Frymyer rides off to boot camp, her stepsister, Tabitha Campbell, 13, issues a warning to no one in particular.
"If she gets hurt over there," she says, "we'll go over and nuke 'em."
its happening now. look at states like Virginia, is it heading more in the direction of NJ, or more to the right? it used to be a solid Republican state, where is the trend taking it?
the "business moving in" mantra works - when businesses providing good wage jobs with benefits move in. when its just another series of strip malls, retails stores, and restaurants providing service jobs - it rings hollow for alot of people.
There was an interesting thread today that showed the highest salaries paid to college graduates are to those with engineering degrees. Who do you think is paying those salaries, Wal-Mart?
americans know these engineering jobs have no future, their parents who are engineers steer their college bound children away from those fields, because they know what is happening to them. I know 100s of people I work with doing exactly this. that's why those programs have to use foreign students to fill the seats.
no american parent is going to spend $100K to educate their kid, to get a job working 60-80 hours per week, competing with offshore labor. why bother, when real estate brokers and stock traders and lawyers are financially much better fields.
the positions that remain, are smaller in number, and higher on the pay scale. its sort of like being a major league baseball player - if you can get in, it pays well, but as a general purpose field that will employ a large number of people - forget it.
A higher pay scale indicates higher demand. Higher demand acts to increase supply. Major League Baseball has a static number of players governed by the number of teams and roster rules. Not so in the market for engineers.
who says the market is "dying" for such people? US tech firms have been screaming about these "shortages" of people for years - its the ruse they use to justify H1B visa programs, foreign student visas, anything and everything to suppress salaries. the engineers who work in these companies see this everyday, they understand what is going on in reality - that's why they are piling their college bound kids into law school.
i'll tell all my previously employed engineering friends who can't find jobs, or who work as consultants and get only partial year wages, no benefits, and have lost their retirement packages.
Hey Gerald, try this:
Optimist: The glass is half full.
Pessimist: The glass is half empty.
Reengineer: You have twice as much glass as you need.
And those jobs came from the outsourcing of American jobs, a state of affairs created by the free traitors and globalists.
Lewisburg might be close but they have a college (Bucknell) to bail them out and also Lewisburg Penitentiary.
State College has Penn State U.
Williamsport has college associated with Penn State U.
All of these cities are impacted by colleges.
Non of the students who graduate stay in those cities. Bear in mind the demographics for those areas are also higher in bodies and income.
Jefferson was a brilliant political philosopher, horticulturalist and architect, and a great statesman, but I'm less familiar with his credentials as an economist. As I recall, there was another writer named Smith, who in 1776 wrote a pretty famous book on economics, and may have differed with Jefferson on this point.
The present economic situation is hardly any different from any other time in our history -
LIAR. This isn't about phase outs. It has never been about phase outs. This is about you free trade types TAKING AMERICAN JOBS AWAY FROM AMERICANS AND HANDING THEM TO FORIEGNERS TO LINE YOUR OWN POCKETS. And no, we haven't made a policy of doing this in the past because our parents by and large had some ethics. Save your bs lies for the mirror. You ain't passing that crap off here.
Actually, it'd be best to tell them to get off their a**es and find a job, when some piss-ant college grad can find one for $50K a year.
i take it you don't understand what it means to be 50 years old, recently tossed out of a solid job due to offshoring, and looking for a job in technology. its uncaring people like you that give Republicans a bad name.
Last year, my company budgeted for an mid-level software engineer. The salary range was between $50-75K. Ultimately, that hire was canceled because the company was bought out.
During the hiring process, we had occasion to interview several recent college graduates who were still registered with their respective university placement offices. We interviewed graduates from several University of California schools -- LA, Santa Barbara, Irvine, San Diego, in addition to Pepperdine, Caltech and my own alma mater, the University of Southern California. Guess how many Americans we talked to?
None.
According to the placement offices, the top American students coming into college are not going into the technical disciplines for the very reasons you cite. The only remaining scientific curriculum they were pursuing was the biology/chemistry/physics majors with the intent to go the medical school. But even that has fallen off with the influx of foreign medical students to U.S. med schools, underwritten by their own govts. and the U.S.
Law school remains the last lucrative career pursuit for the cream of the crop, at least so far as the discerning American student is concerned.
yes.
that's why there will never be tort reform in this country. an increasing number of people have their livelihoods rooted in a litigious civil court system - and the law schools are cranking out more and more of them every year. they will wnsure their own compensation by gaming "the system" and making sure it works for them. Its why I pay $5000 a year to insure 3 cars in NY, having never made a claim in 20 years. My premium is the "lawyer tax".
the things we talk about half jokingly today - like lawsuits against gun makers for criminal acts, or lawsuits against food companies for selling "junk food" - will become realities over the next 20 years, to keep all these new lawyers paid.
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