Closing of Oldest U.S. Car Plant Evokes Cries From the Heart of Kenosha
Last week, Chrysler stopped the assembly line for 10 minutes in its massive auto plant here and bought soft drinks and coffee for workers to reward them for productivity and outstanding quality.
Wednesday, Chrysler gave the same workers pink slips.
“One day we’re heroes and next they stick it in our ear,” said John Callahan, 54, who has worked in the plant for three different automobile manufacturers during the last 35 years.
In parking lots filled with American-made vehicles, many plastered with “Buy American” bumper stickers, in poorly lighted taverns where beer is a chaser for whiskey, at long Formica coffee shop counters, the surprise decision to close the 86-year-old plant and displace 5,500 workers was the only topic of conversation.
Workers Resentful
Plaintive talk, from men who still carry their sandwiches in old-fashioned lunch buckets, resounded in the storefronts that border the 40-square-block factory--a bitter, wailing Greek chorus, an echo of other plant closings throughout the Midwest in the last decade.
“I don’t understand what goes on in corporate offices,” said Keith Schumacher, 33, a welder who started in the plant when he graduated from high school. “I guess they figure they can just sit back in their chairs and play games with people’s lives.”
“These guys promise you the moon, tell you you are valuable and then they give you the shaft,” said Merle Crane, 42, a second-generation assembly line worker in the plant.
Heart of the City
“I’m 50 years old,” said Dell Hoffman, who has put in 18 years at the factory. “I don’t know where I’m going to get something else. This whole town will probably go to hell.”
Chrysler announced that it would close down all work in Kenosha facilities, except for 1,000 jobs at an engine plant, because it had excess capacity as a result of its acquisition last year of American Motors. The main Kenosha facility, a sprawling factory in the heart of this city of 78,000, is the oldest continuously operated auto factory in the country.
The decision to close the plant marks an end to an auto making tradition that began in 1902 when the first one-cylinder Rambler rolled out the door.
“It’s going to increase our unemployment from 8% to 25%,” said John R. Collins, the executive of Kenosha County, which is located about midway between Chicago and Milwaukee on the shore of Lake Michigan. “We’ve already lost 10,000 jobs since 1975, and now we’re losing another 5,500. It’s going to cause a substantial period of slow growth. Ten years from now, all this will be history, but it’s gonna be a tough 10 years in between.”
Added Mary Jane Landry, Kenosha School Board president: “I don’t think the community ever expected the plant to really close because they’ve threatened so often. It was like the little boy who cried wolf. But this morning, it’s no longer a threat. It’s a promise.”
About 60% of the affected Chrysler workers are Kenosha-area residents, according to Lou Micheln, executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce. “The plant closing will probably mean the loss of another 300 to 400 area jobs that are created by Chrysler’s presence here.”
“I’m scared,” said assembly line worker George Elliot, 56, who lives in a Milwaukee suburb. “This is sad, but the world is changing and we have to face it. We’re creating a country made of haves and have-nots. I make $14.25 an hour. I’m going to have to look for a job that pays $4 or $5 an hour until I’m 62. But I’d work till I was 70 if I could find a decent job.”
Tavern owner Freddie Kauzrich Sr., who has owned a watering spot across from the factory’s busy Gate 15 for the last 40 years, took the news in stride. “It’s a roller coaster,” he said. “It always has been at that factory.”
Less philosophical was the worker who changed the text under a picture of the Chrysler Corp. president hanging in a store window across from the factory. Tuesday it said: “Iacocca for President.” On Wednesday, the letters were changed to read: “Iacocca Lied To Us.”
