O.C.’s Blue-Collar Blues : As Labor-Intensive Production Firms Leave, Jobless Workers Wonder if the American Dream is a Mirage

Life never seemed sweeter, safer--and more predictable--to Leon and Mary Lindsey.

They still lived in unassuming comfort in one of those neatly attractive tracts that were a step up for hundreds of families moving out of Los Angeles County in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Leon still worked for a long-established manufacturer, Weiser Lock, his employer for nearly 30 years, during which he rose through the production-line ranks to become a $34,000-a-year supervisor.

And with their children, Mark and Terri, grown and on their own, the Lindseys could indulge in some of life’s little perks. They bought a stylish new sedan. They took vacation cruises to Mexico, then to the Caribbean. They looked at rustically open land near Redding for a possible place to retire.

Then overnight in 1988, their world turned upside down. Weiser--in an announcement that surprised most employees--said it was shutting down the plant in Huntington Beach, laying off the 1,000 workers there and moving operations to the more affordable environs of Tucson, Ariz.

Five months ago, after spending 31 1/2 years at Weiser, Leon Lindsey was let go in the company’s last round of layoffs.

Like so many other families in the same situation, the Lindseys found their pride battered, their financial stability shaken, their pursuit of the next phase of their American Dream dead in its tracks.

“You work hard all your life. You reach a point where you can smell the roses--then wham, your job’s gone and you’re out, just like that,” said Leon, now 51 and still out of work this Labor Day weekend.

His wife, Mary, 47, put it this way: “Oh, we’ve heard the (corporate) explanations, the this-and-that on economic trends. They’re true, I’m sure, and it’s fine--for them.

“But what about the workers caught in the middle, and their families and their lives?” she added. “What of the ones who have to try and start all over again?”

Although Orange County has never been a classic industrial mecca, it had long boasted of having an important, thriving manufacturing sector. In fact, many of these firms had fled the crowded, costlier conditions of Los Angeles County after World War II for what was then a wide-open, affordable Orange County.

But this decade is showing the downside of that same cycle: the slow but unmistakable fade-out of the traditional blue-collar production work force in Orange County.

In the 1950s, manufacturing of all kinds accounted for 40% of non-agricultural jobs in Orange County. The percentage is now only 22% as the county more than ever is keyed to high-technology firms and such service-sector fields as retail, transportation, finance, restaurants and hotels.

And the traditional labor-intensive manufacturers are now leaving Orange County in increasing numbers for much the same reasons such companies left Los Angeles and other older areas in the first place.

Some of these relocating plants are being consolidated with a corporation’s other existing operations, while others are being moved to newly built facilities in regions that are now regarded as more favorable.

“It’s become too costly in land and labor in Orange County (for manufacturers), in having to grapple with the traffic congestion and skyrocketing housing prices here as well as the environmental constraints,” explained Chapman College economist James Doti.

Much of the exodus from Orange County was to the Inland Empire. Now, said Doti, a leading forecaster with the college’s Center for Economic Research, “we’re seeing firms leaving California altogether for the Sun Belt or Carolinas, to Mexico and even Asia.”

Twenty-two Orange County-based companies have closed down or have announced such a move since February, 1989, when a federal law requiring the filing of such mass-layoff notices went into effect, according to the state Employment Development Department. More than 2,300 workers are affected in these shutdowns.

While most of these closings are in the manufacturing field, not all involved the stereotypical “heavy” manufacturer. They include production-line firms in the high-tech fields that are also seeking greater leverage in face of increasingly sophisticated and fierce competition in the world marketplaces.

In the past three years, county-based firms that have shut down and relocated all or part of their manufacturing operations ranged from Laura Scudder potato chips and Smith International oil tools to Collins Defense Communications, Allergan Eye Care and Xidex computer disks.

The impact of these closings may seem more diffused and less sweepingly dramatic in Orange County.

“We’re not your traditional ‘industrial town’ here, like many communities back East and in the Midwest,” noted UC Irvine economist David Brownstone. “But no matter what the magnitude here, the impacts on people’s lives--and the dilemma they face on the job market--are much the same and just as devastating.”

The dilemma is basically this: Many workers being laid off today--whether from plant closings or the more familiar aerospace and defense industry layoffs--find that their kind of jobs are now outmoded. There are other high-paying jobs on the market but these usually mean learning brand-new skills, while other available jobs are strictly low-paying, lower-skilled ones.

And nowhere is this dilemma more dramatically acute than with that class of longtime mid-America workers raised their whole lives on the promises of the American Dream.

“In many ways, they are the ones who have undergone the most traumatic reactions, the ones who feel the most abandoned,” said Anita Del Rio, operations manager of the Job Training Partnership Agency of Orange County, a federally supported re-employment and retraining program.

They are a lot like Leon Lindsey.

Growing up, Lindsey knew the rules of the American Dream and work ethic. These principles were, after all, as cherished and familiar as any mainstream canon.

“You’re taught to go out and get a good job, to be real diligent and loyal, so you can earn respect and all those nice benefits,” said Leon, who was born into an Arkansas farm family and raised in the blue-collar communities of Los Angeles County.

He didn’t seem to waste much time. While a student attending Commerce High School, he worked part time in a plastics factory. In 1959, then only 20 and just out of the Navy after two years’ active duty, he got a job as a $1.80-an-hour foundry worker at Weiser, then in South Gate.

After that, Leon and Mary Lindsey--who were married in 1960--continued to move up the ladder.

Leon moved up to Weiser’s plating department as a regular production-line worker, then a lead man, then a supervisor in charge of more than 40 employees. In 1972, after years of living in tiny dwellings in Lynwood, the family bought a $25,500 three-bedroom home--their present place in Buena Park.

And by 1978, when Weiser itself moved from South Gate to Huntington Beach, the company appeared more rock-solid than ever, its work force like one vast extended family.

“The company was still growing. And people didn’t seem to leave. You had whole families working on the line--some of them three generations,” Leon said. “We thought Weiser would be there forever. We thought we would retire from here.”

True, the ‘80s produced serious signs of slippage. American lock manufacturers were losing crucial business to competitors in Asia. Weiser’s own plant operations were regarded as now too outmoded and costly to handle a global-market crisis.

Still, on Aug. 6, 1988, when Weiser proclaimed its formal decision for the plant’s closing and layoffs, Leon and other workers remember it as a bombshell.

When Leon attended the farewell potluck lunch on his last day, April 12, it was like all the others he had attended over the 20-month phase-out. “People tried to be cheerful. But it was real sad, because that’s when it really hits people.”

For Leon, the most stunning impact came the following Monday, four days later. “I woke up around 4 a.m. as usual. But, for a moment, I had forgotten. I didn’t have a job to go to any more. I really felt lost.”

It was even worse later the same morning. He found himself at a state office in Fullerton in a situation that seemed unbelievable--and galling--to him.

After all these years, he was standing in the unemployment line.

He hasn’t had much luck since in his search for another production-line supervisor’s job.

Before Leon was laid off, he did have a few sessions with the re-employment specialist that Weiser brought in to advise its workers. Also, he keeps in touch with his local state Employment Development Department on possible job listings.

However, he relies mostly on his personal pipeline--the network of production-line supervisors at other companies and similar contacts in the industrial fields.

Although he has sent out resumes to 12 prospective employers, he has had only four interviews, including one with a large manufacturer in Ontario.

The fast dwindling demand for production-line supervisors in the traditional manufacturing field is one obviously crucial factor, he feels.

But he also speculates that his age, and the higher pay and other personnel costs that go with his seniority, are working against him.

However, Leon believes he may find it too difficult to do what some laid-off workers have done. That is, learn new skills for a high-demand field--such as computer programming--through retraining programs offered by the federally backed Job Training Partnership Agency offices and affiliated college and community groups.

“That job (production-line supervisor) is the only one I really know. It’s what I’ve done most of my life and what I’m really good at it,” he explained. His current plan: to “tough it out” in hopes of finding a similar job.

“Leon and I know we’re better off than a lot of other (laid-off) workers,” Mary added. “There are younger people who are in danger of losing everything, including their homes. We’re lucky. We have more to fall back on.”

Because of his 31 years of seniority, Leon received a sizable severance-pay package from Weiser. And for the past three years Mary has been working part time in an insurance office.

Nevertheless, the Lindseys now find themselves living under a fiscal siege.

Several months ago, they refinanced their home--the monthly payments, once only $240, have leaped to $1,400--to pay off all other major existing debts, including a sedan and a pickup truck they had purchased in the mid-’80s.

They now must pay $295 a month for their own medical insurance. They have cut out virtually all “going out” expenses, such as restaurants, movies and sports events.

And the Lindseys’ tentative “deadline” is this: If Leon hasn’t found a similar job in the next month or so--his $190-a-week state unemployment insurance runs out in mid-October--and he decides not to try a job retraining program, they will have --they will have to seriously consider a grim prospect.

It would mean accepting a lower-status job and big pay cut, whether in the manufacturing field or with one of the far more numerous service-sector employers.

It is something the Lindseys have obviously thought about--and dread. “Sure, if we have to, we will face that reality,” Leon said. “But for now, I’m hanging in there. I’m counting on finding my job.”

Despite the Lindseys’ optimism, the overall trends would seem--more than ever--to be going the other way.

Leon hasn’t ignored this. “All you have to do is pick up the newspaper and read about all the global competing, the new mass layoffs, the companies moving to Texas and Mexico and Canada, even Asia,” he said.

And the desolating impacts on workers from plant closings aren’t just those heard about in such distant American communities as a Kenosha, Wis., or a Flint, Mich.

For the Lindseys, it can be as close as just down the next street or two.

“There’s two guys we know in our neighborhood. Both have been given their notices. And yes,” added Leon Lindsey with more than a little empathy, “both are over 50. Yes, both have worked for the same companies--for a long time.”