CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : And Then There Were No Blue-Collar Jobs : Economy: The scheduled closing of Vernon’s Oscar Mayer plant deepens the decline in L.A. area industrial jobs.
The restructuring of Greater Los Angeles’ economy reminds me of the song, “Ten Little Indian Boys.” Slowly but surely, heavy industry has dwindled to the point where there’s almost none. An important economic safety valve for thousands of area residents who either could not or did not want to go to college has thereby been closed. The scheduled shutdown in September of the Oscar Mayer Foods Corp. facility in Vernon is the lastest example of the trend.
Oscar Mayer was once a pacesetter in the meat-packing industry, paying good wages and benefits. That abruptly changed when the sausage-maker and its subsidiary, Louis Rich, were gobbled up in the mid-’80s by the largest food and beverage conglomerate in the country, Philip Morris. Oscar Mayer soon cut labor costs, largely through technological innovation that enabled plants to operate economically seven days a week. It also shifted the bulk of its production to more modern facilities in the Midwest. Other savings were extracted the old-fashioned way: wage concessions.
Still, most analysts believed that Oscar Mayer would keep its profitable, though technologically backward, Vernon facility operating. Southeastern Los Angeles only recently regained its stability after the series of industrial exits in the late ‘70s-- General Motors from South Gate, Uniroyal and B.F. Goodrich from Commerce, Bethlehem Steel from Vernon. Countywide, 75,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared.
Some economists downplayed this devastation. These industries were purging themselves of inefficient facilities and overpaid managers and workers, they said. Soon, the workers were blamed for not being more productive.
Such explanations may have proved satisfactory in the past, but not anymore. The workers at the Vernon plant are hardly greedy: In the last 10 years, they have received only one raise--25 cents an hour, to $10.94 an hour, say union officials.
Most of them have worked at the plant for more than 15 years and live nearby. Many are close to retirement. Sixty-five percent belong to Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union; 75% are Latino.
One of the main reasons for closing the facility had little to do with worker productivity. Last year, the company paid $319 a month per Vernon worker for health-related benefits, compared with under $200 at its Madison, Wis., facility. This cost is built into any evaluation of whether a plant is efficient or not.
So what’s to be done? Let giant corporations eliminate health-care benefits and older workers? Oscar Mayer and its parent corporation are making large profits from their Los Angeles market. Some of that money should have gone toward paying their workers’ medical coverage and full retirement plans.
What is amazing is that the labor Establishment has rolled over in response to the Vernon closure. After all that has happened in Southeast L.A., labor has yet to develop a policy to stop plant closures. In fact, local union leaders say they are eager to fight plant shutdowns. They complain that it is the officers of the international, worried about other corporate contracts, who are eager to cut a deal and leave the locals to preside at a plant’s funeral. Sources in the Los Angeles labor community say this seems to be the case with the United Food and Commercial Workers International.
Since it is evident that the labor Establishment won’t do something about plant closures, the community and the local politicians should step in and call for a labor summit. They must recognize that a Los Angeles economy less and less industrialized is one that offers fewer and fewer well-paying blue-collar jobs, thereby blocking an escape route for minorities stranded in the underclass.
Oscar Mayer is entitled to move its plant anywhere it wants. But the community has every right to fight the move since it will have to pay the social costs.
At bottom, what’s at stake is the kind of metropolis we want in the year 2050. A recent study of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning shows that low-paying jobs and poverty are increasing at a faster pace in Los Angeles than anywhere else in the country, a trend that is directly linked to the flight of industry. Since Latinos are among those who have most acutely experienced the impact of plant shutdowns, Latino politicos should take the lead in developing a common strategy to stop the Oscar Mayers from moving out. If not, the good jobs that remain will, like the “Ten Little Indian Boys,” dwindle to none.
