Selling off America's manufacturing might, a factory at a time - Charlie LeDuff

[Bozita]

Video at link:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090409/METRO08/904090411/Selling+off+America+s+manufacturing+might++a+factory+at+a+time

Thursday, April 9, 2009
Travels with Charlie
Selling off America's manufacturing might, a factory at a time
Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News


Ypsilanti -- You can now watch the liquidation of the American Dream in real time.

Any given week, the guts of a whole factory are auctioned off. Its contents are sold piece by piece and taken away for scrap or antiques or resale to foreign companies. Men with blowtorches and trucks haul off tool-and-die machines, aluminum siding, hoists, drinking fountains, salt and pepper shakers, anything that might be of some value. It is the removal of the country's mechanical heart right before your eyes. It is breathtaking.

"Everyone in our generation from the Midwest ought to see this," said Cooper Suter, a 44-year-old unemployed carpenter from Toledo who has turned to scrapping factories to make ends meet. "It kind of sums up life in the Rust Belt."

More than a dozen factory auctions have been held over the past six months in Michigan alone. On a recent morning, Suter and his sidekick, Rick Phillips, a 25-year-old former steelyard worker, were mining the last remnants of the Automotive Components Holdings plant, which made alternators and windshield wiper motors for Visteon and Ford. Men like Suter call themselves the cockroaches, the crumb snatchers, the last people in the factory before the metal scrappers come.

ACH is a temporary company owned by Ford Motor Co. whose sole purpose is to sell or shut down 17 former Visteon Corp. plants. In its heyday, the factory employed 3,800 people.

It closed in December, leaving 500 people to wonder how they will pay the banker, the dean, the grocer.

The floors are still wet with oil, the locker rooms still smell of men. It is said that Henry Ford used to walk this factory when he acquired it in 1932. But that is all a fading memory.

"The finality of these closings; these plants, the sites, the jobs, the paychecks, the industry, they aren't coming back," said Suter, a father of three, the son of a college professor who never went to college himself. He gambled on the working class life and lost.

more...

[earthside]

1. But, What About Wells Fargo?

The Dow has rallied as much as 200 points today!

Does what happened to a Ford factory matter when after getting a $25 billion bailout, Wells Fargo can report a $3 billion profit?

Hey, don't harsh my buzz with this depressing manufacturing stuff ... the future of America is in buying and selling stock with leveraged dollars.

:sarcasm:

Sorry, but this report is about genuine America -- it makes me sick that there are some who want to make the propaganda from Wall Street bankers more important than what happens to real people in this country.

[Enthusiast]

3. Right on!

Shuffling paper does not constitute a manufacturing base. These idiots have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs in their greedy quest for riches. There was plenty for everyone. Some weren't satisfied with being very wealthy, they had to become filthy rich, and for what.

[Enthusiast]

2. It happened to me twice.

Now, at 56, and disabled, I have given up the hope of ever working in manufacturing again. Being thrown out of factory work, where you have worked since a teenager, is like a kick in the gut that you never recover from. Every effort must be made to keep and increase manufacturing here.

There is no mistake, both the U.S.A. and The Soviet Union were only able to beat back the threat of fascism because of their overwhelming manufacturing superiority.

[azmouse]

4. I did factory work for almost 12 years in 4 different factories....

Everyone one of those factories moved overseas, to stay competitive they said. While most of it wasn't great work 2 of those jobs paid fairly well. To this day I would have a hard time finding jobs that pay as much and have benefits like those jobs did and I worked at those factories over 20 years ago.

[acmavm]

5. Let me see, who was it that said 'we don't need those jobs' the

other day?

Let me think, I know it'll come to me. :sarcasm:

[blue97keet]

6. We don't need those engineering and IT jobs either

:sarcasm:

[Chisox08]

7. Jobs we don't need jobs at all

:sarcasm:

[DemReadingDU]

8. Recovery? What recovery?

Not going to be a recovery back to what we had in 2006. But maybe recovery like we had in the 1930's.

[knitter4democracy]

9. What I want to know is what about the next war?

Globalism hasn't stopped wars, though it has stopped the massive world wars (except for ones fought in small skirmishes all over). I want to know how the hell we're going to survive any war if we can't make our own tanks, shells, planes, or anything? It wouldn't be hard for a determined enemy to blockade us rather effectively, and some of us remember how tight things were after 9/11 when they shut down the ports for days. Stores started running out of stuff, and I have yet to know a yarn shop owner who doesn't bring that up and remember how shipments of the new fall stock were months late when customers were clamoring for yarn to knit with for the troops and to soothe our wounded souls.

If we can't make anything, we're sitting ducks.