Posted on 01/21/2006 4:53:44 PM PST by Simmy2.5
FLINT, United States (AFP) - As yet another auto plant prepares to shut is doors, the mayor of Flint, Michigan has come up with a radical - and possibly illegal - plan: a city-run assembly plant.
The aim is to bring much-needed jobs to a town that has sunken even further into despair in the 15 years since film maker Michael Moore documented the first round of plant closures by General Motors in his award-winning "Roger and Me".
Boarded-up houses and businesses darken the city's streets. Abandoned lots are choked with weeds and trash. Schools are crumbling. The bright lights of a downtown revitalization program serve merely to highlight the city's empty streets.
It is a scene that is playing out in industrial towns across the nation as manufacturing jobs are shipped to cheaper labor markets overseas. Next week, the despair will spread to more towns when Ford Motor Company announces a slew of plant closures.
But the Flint Mayor Donald Williamson is hopeful.
In his first two years in office he managed to wrest the city from state control by erasing a massive deficit. He's paved the roads and managed to get a fresh slate of city councilors elected who back his sometimes controversial plans.
"We are going to do something different in this city that nobody else has done," Williamson said as he leaned across his wide desk in city hall.
"We will (build) our own manufacturing plants that the city funds," he said. "We are going to specialize in nothing but truck accessories."
There is plenty of factory space available and people who are used to working on the assembly line. And once the city proves the plants can make a profit, buyers are certain to come knocking, Williamson said.
It's not clear if the city would be allowed to run a for-profit enterprise, and many have questioned the rationality of the plan.
"It seems like the private sector ought to be the one developing plants and not the municipality," said Paul Keep, editor of the Flint Journal. "Is this going to take millions and millions of dollars from the Flint treasury?"
When pressed, Williamson refused to offer more details or even say when he plans on submitting his proposal to the city council.
But the fact that he's considering it highlights the desperate times Flint has fallen upon.
"Reality doesn't have a lot to do with what gets promised in Flint," said Albert Price, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, in Flint.
"Desperate people will believe anything."
Flint has hosted some spectacular failures over the years as the city tried to reverse the tide of job losses, Price said.
There was Autoworld, the failed theme park that closed within six months and cost the city 100 million dollars. Then there was a bid to revitalize the downtown with a festival market place. And an attempt to draw tourists by having the city buy and renovate a downtown hotel.
"Flint is in a desperate condition but it has little to do with Flint in particular," Price said. "Flint has lost more industrial jobs than most cities had."
Flint has always been a GM town and its fortunes have risen and fallen along with those of its main employer.
The northern Michigan town's population peaked in the 1950s at 200,000. But as GM's payroll shrank from 80,000 to its current level of less than 10,000 (including those employed at its former subsidiary, the now bankrupt parts supplier Delphi), so too did Flint.
The 2000 census pegged the population at less than 125,000 and it has declined even further since then as parents flee crumbling schools whose walls are lined with mould.
In November, GM said it would be closing another plant and there are rumors that Delphi will soon lay off thousands more employees. Unemployment in the town is already nearly three times the national average.
"There's a lot of people with a lot of plans and I hope they all work," said Keep of the Flint Journal. "Michigan's economy is broken with all this loss of manufacturing.
"It's a period of adjustment and I don't think we really have a clear idea as to what Michigan will be like. It's unsettling to people."
And Flint can be renamed Starnesville.
"Flint has hosted some spectacular failures over the years as the city tried to reverse the tide of job losses, Price said.
There was Autoworld, the failed theme park that closed within six months and cost the city 100 million dollars. Then there was a bid to revitalize the downtown with a festival market place. And an attempt to draw tourists by having the city buy and renovate a downtown hotel."
Gee, I wonder who paid for these?
What kind of automobiles would they assemble at the People's Auto Works? I'm sure they could get the rights from other government run auto businesses, like the Trabant, Lada and Zil.
I was stunned to learn of this wage inequity.."
I wouldn't flame you over that! It is outrageous. This is a big part of what killed the US Auto Industry. And the thing is, the UAW would defend every cent they get and scream for more.
I have to believe that management was eager to offshore everything they could to get away from these people.
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