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(This jackass reporter couldn't find a single Black worker to interview.)
NY Times, Nov. 28, 2018
G.M., Not Trump, Is the Real Villain to Some Ohio Factory Workers
By Noam Scheiber
LORDSTOWN, Ohio — After an election campaign in which he had pledged a
manufacturing renaissance, President Trump came to this once-thriving
industrial region of northeastern Ohio last year and all but waved a
mission-accomplished flag.
The jobs are “all coming back,” he announced. “Don’t move, don’t sell
your house.”
That vow collided with the shifting dynamics of the auto industry on
Monday when General Motors told workers it was idling Lordstown’s prized
Chevrolet factory.
“Some people were crying,” said Joyce Olesky, a 23-year employee of the
plant. “I looked over and saw people who looked like they had the flu,
turning white.”
Many Lordstown residents recalled that Mr. Trump had promoted steel
tariffs and his trade savvy as a way to create jobs. But while critics
faulted the president for failing to deliver what he promised, a number
of workers were quick to exonerate him.
Some portrayed him as well intentioned but simply outgunned by larger
economic forces. Others suggested that whatever Mr. Trump’s flaws, they
paled in comparison to those of General Motors, which they considered
the real culprit.
“I believe that no matter tariff or not, G.M. will continue to take our
cars out of this country because it’s cheaper to do it and ship it
back,” said Ms. Olesky, a Trump supporter.
Beyond the roughly 1,600 jobs that are likely to be lost at the plant,
there are a few dozen suppliers employing thousands of workers in the
region, along with businesses here in the Mahoning Valley that will be
hit hard by the loss of customers.
On Monday morning, Earl Ross, the owner of Ross’ Eatery & Pub, a social
hub in Lordstown, was in a tree stand poised to hunt deer when he
received a text message about the news. “My reaction was a sick
stomach,” Mr. Ross said, “and for the whole rest of the day, I just sat
in the rain and thought about the future.”
There is also the likely effect on the housing market, as workers try to
offload mortgages amid the prospect of unemployment.
Jason Sickler, who has worked at the plant since 2000, said he would
prepare his house for a possible sale as he contemplated whether to
request a transfer to a General Motors operation in another city.
“I was literally nauseous yesterday when I walked out of there,” said
Mr. Sickler, who enjoys his job in the trim department and is loath to
relocate with a son still in high school. “Today I’m trying to get a
better game plan, accept it a little more.”
In some ways the story of Lordstown in recent decades sounds a lot like
the story of industrial America writ large. The number of workers at the
G.M. plant peaked around 13,000 in the mid-1980s, according to the union
there. It had dropped below 5,000 by this decade, as foreign competition
and automation took their toll.
But in other respects G.M.’s presence allowed the village of about 3,200
to defy the economic realities bearing down on the region.
Factory workers have helped generate millions of dollars in village
income-tax revenue over the years to pay for infrastructure and other
expenses. “We’ve been blessed with the ability to have money to do
that,” said Arno Hill, who has served as mayor in two stints totaling
nearly 20 years since the early 1990s.
Even during the recession and financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, which
pushed G.M. into bankruptcy, the plant and the town were only briefly
affected. And in 2010, when G.M. began to produce a new fuel-efficient
sedan, the Chevrolet Cruze, in Lordstown, workers at the plant were
overjoyed.
Marisol Gonzalez-Bowers, a veteran of the Lordstown plant, said she
could easily take home $75,000 a year during the early half of this decade.
“Oh, my God, we were so excited,” said Marisol Gonzalez-Bowers, who has
spent more than two decades at the plant. “We had three shifts, were
running at full capacity. Twelve hours if you wanted it.” Ms.
Gonzalez-Bowers said that with overtime, she could easily take home
$75,000 a year during the early half of this decade.
Even with Lordstown’s relative durability, Mr. Trump’s vision of an
industrial comeback resonated in town. Mr. Trump carried the county by
about 6 percentage points, a nearly 30-point swing toward Republicans
since President Barack Obama won it decisively in 2012.
But the day after the election, General Motors announced that it would
eliminate a third shift at the Lordstown plant. After years of strong
sales, the Cruze was flagging as consumers defected to trucks and
sport-utility vehicles.
Then, in April of this year, as the slump continued, the company said it
was eliminating a second shift. The workers’ last day coincided with
news reports that the company would be building a popular S.U.V. in Mexico.
“It was terrible — they announced that as people were walking out to
their cars,” said Dave Green, the president of the United Automobile
Workers local in the area. “They turn on the radio, and they hear that
G.M. is going to build the Blazer in Mexico.”
Dave Green, the president of the union local in the area, recalled
hearing last spring about an earlier round of layoffs. “It was terrible
— they announced that as people were walking out to their cars,” he said.
Critics said Mr. Trump seemed oblivious to the plant’s struggles despite
his promise to workers there. “I had a conversation with him and he did
not know about the first two shift layoffs,” said Senator Sherrod Brown,
an Ohio Democrat, who spoke with Mr. Trump by phone over the summer. “It
shocked me.”
Mr. Brown said that he had asked Mr. Trump to intervene personally with
G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, and that the president had been
noncommittal. “He said, ‘We’ll see,’” Mr. Brown recalled. The White
House declined to comment.
The notion that Mr. Trump is indifferent or ineffective in the face of
factory job losses challenges the essence of his political appeal, and
he has moved to counter that idea — on Tuesday by threatening to take
away G.M.’s government subsidies, and on Wednesday by calling for new
tariffs on imported cars. At least some of the workers spurned by
General Motors share Mr. Brown’s feeling that the president could have
done more for them.
Tommy Wolikow was laid off from the plant last year and said he became a
Trump fan after attending the president’s speech hailing the return of
manufacturing jobs. “I felt he was speaking to me, and I believed him,”
said Mr. Wolikow, who didn’t vote in 2016 but had planned to vote for
Mr. Trump in 2020. “I took the man for his word.”
But in recent months, Mr. Wolikow has concluded that the president
wasn’t interested in following through.
Rochelle Carlisle and Tommy Wolikow were both laid off from the G.M.
plant, where together they once made about $100,000 a year. She is now a
waitress at Cracker Barrel, and he does volunteer work.
Mr. Wolikow, who now volunteers for the progressive group Good Jobs
Nation, said that he and his fiancée, Rochelle Carlisle, together
brought home around $100,000 a year when both worked at the plant in
2016, but that they now lived on her earnings as a waitress at Cracker
Barrel. It brings in about $250 to $300 a week — not enough to cover
their mortgage and car payments, to say nothing of expenses for their
three daughters.
Other workers continue to support the president, however. “What he had
planned, it should have worked,” said T.J. Lambert, a former G.M. worker
in Lordstown who left the plant in late 2016. Of the corporate tax cut
passed under Mr. Trump, he said: “The plan was to bring those jobs back,
a one-time tax cut. He can’t have control over what a corporation does
100 percent.”
Ms. Olesky and Mr. Sickler, the current G.M. workers, have voted
reliably Republican in recent years, but they are proud union members
who say the labor movement is often the only protection the middle class
has against corporate greed. “Without a union, people would be making
$11 per hour,” Ms. Olesky said. “Management gets as much as they can,
and unions try to protect us.”
Mr. Sickler noted in disbelief that the company would be laying off
eight of his colleagues at the end of this week, even though it would
cost little to allow them to stay on until the plant goes idle in March.
“They’re trying to run on a skeleton crew to save money,” he said.
Kimberly Carpenter, a General Motors spokeswoman, said the layoffs were
“just regular people movement due to people returning from leave.”
“I said, ‘I heard you’re closing your plant,’” Mr. Trump told The Wall
Street Journal, relating their conversation. “‘It’s not going to be
closed for long, I hope, Mary, because if it is, you have a problem.’”
Mayor Hill, a tall, barrel-chested man who worked for decades for a
local automotive supplier, said he thought the odds were fair that the
president would eventually save the plant, though he conceded it could
take several months.
“People say, ‘Trump promised us,’” Mr. Hill said. “Yes, he came here,
told the people in the valley, ‘Don’t sell your house, we’re going to
bring your jobs back.’ Well, you know, they made the announcement
yesterday. How soon is soon enough?”
Carlo Wolff contributed reporting and Susan Beachy contributed research.
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