Rock Star Takes Out Ads to Help His Hometown : Plant Battle: Springsteen vs. 3M

Rock star Bruce Springsteen is out to help his hometown.

Springsteen, who has donated more than $1 million to help feed the nation’s unemployed laborers, has taken on a new cause: coming to the rescue of 450 workers about to lose their jobs when Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing shuts down a plant next spring in Freehold, N.J., the town where Springsteen grew up and the subject of his recent song “My Home Town.”

This particular campaign is not being waged with music, however. Advertisements signed by Springsteen and fellow singer Willie Nelson will appear today in four newspapers urging 3M to reverse field and not phase out operations at its 25-year-old Freehold factory, which makes magnetic audio and videotape for the entertainment industry.

Production at the Freehold plant will be moved to two other 3M plants “because of competition and the need to improve production efficiency, reduce costs and sustain world-class quality,” a company spokesman said.

Protesting that decision, the advertisement’s message says: “3M: Don’t Abandon Our Hometown!”

It also includes the following letter from Springsteen and Nelson:

“Dear 3M: On behalf of the working people, their families and the community of Freehold, New Jersey, we urge you to reconsider your decision to shut down the 3M video and audio tape facility.

“We know that these decisions are always difficult to make, but we believe that people of good will should be able to sit down and come up with a humane program that will keep those jobs and those workers in Freehold.”

The letter also appeals to other members of the entertainment industry, who use the plant’s products, to join the campaign to save the factory.

The advertisement starts with lyrics from the Springsteen song. Within the song there is a reference to a factory closing in Freehold:

“Now Main Street’s white - washed windows and vacant stores seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more. They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks. Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back . . . to your hometown.” The ad notes that some of the workers at the Freehold plant came to work there after they lost their jobs when the textile plant shut down.

“We can’t just let this happen again and again,” states the advertisement, which was prepared by Local 8-760 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, which represents the Freehold workers, and by the Labor Institute, a New York-based public interest organization that conducts media support and education programs for unions.

The ads were placed in the New York Times, the Asbury Park Press (the local paper for Freehold), the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch (the local paper for 3M’s corporate headquarters in St. Paul, Minn.) and Variety, the weekly show business publication.

The Springsteen connection actually came about last month when union officials approached the Labor Institute for assistance on the plant closing problem.

According to Howard Saunders, a spokesman for the institute, the institute and the union decided to explore the possibility of getting Springsteen involved because of his link to Freehold and because he has regularly urged people attending his concerts to contribute to food banks run by union members.

Soon after that, Stanley Fisher, president of Local 8-760, made contact with Jon Landau Management Associates, Springsteen’s management company, and the singer decided to help, according to Barbara Carr, a spokeswoman for the agency.

While Nelson did not live in Freehold, he volunteered to work with Springsteen on this project after hearing about the issue within the music industry.

The advertisement praises 3M for the commitment it has shown to helping the world’s hungry through the company’s involvement with the “We Are the World” program, which has provided millions of dollars for famine relief in Africa.

Plant Is Profitable

“But,” the advertisement notes, “we deeply believe that it’s just as important to shoulder that responsibility at home . . . with working people, their families and their communities.”

Fisher said the plant was profitable, although he had no specific figures. He said company officials had told him that, to get the company up to “an acceptable level of profit,” about $15 million to $20 million in improvements would have to be made.

“It’s a business decision,” he said. “There’s not a labor dispute here.” The Freehold workers, about 60% of whom are women, make about $9 an hour, Fisher said.

3M made the announcement on Nov. 8. “It (the plant) will be phased out in steps between March 1 and June, and the production will be moved to 3M plants at Hutchinson, Minn., and Wahpeton, N.D.,” said John Lively, the company’s director of public relations services.

He said that 3M had concluded that the Freehold plant was too small to upgrade efficiently. Lively said in a telephone interview that it would be easier to adapt the Minnesota and North Dakota facilities for enhanced production of professional reel-to-reel audio tape and 3/4-inch videocassettes now made in New Jersey.

Lively declined to say if the plant was profitable. He would only say that the New Jersey operation is part of the company’s electronic and information technologies sector, which “has been profitable.”

In 1984, 3M had net income of $733 million on sales of $7.7 billion.

He said the company’s decision to close the plant had nothing to do with labor costs there.

Lively noted that, when the closure was announced, the company’s division vice president, Eduardo Pieruzzi, said: “It was a difficult decision for us, especially since our employees in Freehold have been so productive and cooperative.”

Lively said the company hoped to begin negotiations soon with the union on severance payments and other matters relating to the closure.

But Fisher said he thinks the company should reward the workers’ productivity by keeping the plant open. “We’re not asking for charity,” he said. “We just want the opportunity to work.”

The Labor Institute’s Saunders said more advertisements are planned, endorsed by other entertainment luminaries who have decided to support the workers’ campaign to keep the plant open.