Burnsville Yarn Plant Closing: 163 Workers To Get Pink Slip

[JPace]

http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story/50863
(This is the 20th plant to close in a year in this area and it is devastating the communities in Western North Carolina)
................................................................
Burnsville yarn plant closing; 163 workers to get pink slips
By Mark Barrett, Staff WriterMarch 1, 2004 11:08 p.m.
BURNSVILLE - The 163 employees of the Avondale Mills textile mill found out Monday that they will join a growing number of mountain workers who are losing their jobs in plant closings.

The yarn plant, for years one of Yancey County's largest employers, will shut down May 4 because of "market weakness" caused by foreign competition, an Avondale official said in a statement.

"Although (the mill) is an efficient producer of yarn, unfair global trade practices make our tasks extremely difficult as our markets continue to shrink," Avondale Executive Vice President Marcus Tapley said in a letter given to employees.

The closing is a tough blow to a county that has yet to recover from job losses in recent years and is one in a string of plant closings announced in several Western North Carolina counties in recent weeks. More than 4,500 manufacturing jobs in the region have or will be lost because of plant closings or layoffs announced since January 2003.

"It's just the latest in a series of disasters," said Charles
More.............

[Atlant]

1. Who'd they vote for again? Think they'll do it again? (NT)

[malachi]

3. Yup! They'll vote the straight Chimp ticket,

'cause he's one of them.

[movonne]

10. Yes!!!

[mbperrin]

2. Wow! Look at that *Bush job machine

go!

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[callous taoboy]

6. I say

don't buy anything but the essentials until butthead is thrown out.
I will not participate in his economy!

[trogdor]

16. Hear hear!

I bought my last new car while Clinton was still President. I think it'll last me a while longer.

[progressivejazz]

5. Hoist with their own petard.

Growing up in New England, I witnessed the economic devastation brought about by moving the mills to the South. And why did they move? Cheap labor and the guarantee it would stay that way in the Southern "right-to-work" states, and tax breaks that were affordable by these Southern states because their citizens refused to demand a decent level of services.

And now they complain that the same thing is being done to them.

Amusing.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ripley]

9. Yeah, that's the ticket. Laugh at Americans being laid off.

Just because they're Southern. You seem to think they are the ones who "stole" your Yankee jobs. Maybe yall should remember New England business men made their wealth off of the backs of agriculture in the South.

You blame poor citizens because they "refused to demand a decent level of services" and get away with it because you're talking about White Southerners. Now apply that sentence to poor minorities in America and see if we'll be as amused.

[Davis_X_Machina]

12. No one's laughing.

And no one's laughing just 'because they're southern'.

And no one's laughing becase just because they're white Southerers.

The Piedmont states did, however, make a pact with the Devil just after WWII -- they adopted and used as a selling point their union-free, low-wage, low-capital-investment, low-regulation, low-infrastructure, low-social capital model of regional development. And mill work, especially in textiles, left the Northeast in droves as a result.

And on the basis of what can now be seen as a transient -- two generations, maybe -- victory, this model was trumpeted, especially by Republicans, as the 'right way' to structure the economy.

This hollow economic 'victory' never could have transpired without the active cooperation of the voters in the region, a majority of whom are and were white.

[Ripley]

13. Which part of the word "amusing" do you not understand?

You imply that people in the south working for shit wages in horrific working conditions in factories or fields because THAT IS ALL THE WORK THERE WAS, is their fault. Blame the victims instead of the wealthy landowners and churches who by way of lies and propaganda have convinced many poor schmucks to vote against their own self interest. As I see it there are more than a few of those schmucks who voted for Bush that thankfully have seen the error of their ways and won't make that mistake again.

Tell me again how John Edwards has done anything to help the textile workers in his state. I don't see any difference in progress when Democrats are voted in and many southern state legislatures are run by Dems.

[Davis_X_Machina]

14. The workers who came down from Canada...

...and in from Ireland to work the mills in Lewiston and Biddeford and Lowell worked the same shit jobs, because that was all there was, made equally obscene fortunes -- more obscene, perhaps, for those were the days before the income tax -- for the Lawrences and Bateses and and Browns, and were subject all the lies, propaganda, and so forth, only a generation or two or three earlier.

But they lived in states where they could, eventually, unionize.

They lived in states that early and aggressively embraced public education, of which they could take advantage.

They lived in states that, eventually, had functioning health-and-welfare legislation.

None of which was provided out of the goodness of the mill owners' hearts. It was wrung from their hands by political action.

The industrial South offered a place without all those detriments to making a buck, and had a good run with it, but only because it could, historically, count on a worker's majority to vote for structuring the regional economy that way, cutting their own throats in the process.

The textile North priced itself out of business. The textile South is pricing itself out of business. The difference is the textile South is pricing itself out of business on the cheap.

[Ripley]

17. So are you suggesting that, once again, it is their fault?

That my dirt poor tobacco farming, mill working relatives didn't move to a good northern union state? Let's see. Why do you think there are so many blacks still in Dixie? It is their home. (Actually my father did take a job with the government in Ohio where I was raised. But he had a college degree and thus mobility.)

Yes, the northeast is clearly more progressive than anywhere except maybe California. But why do you insist on blaming poorly educated people who suffer more disproportionately than any other region? Yes, a lot of them are ignorant. Yes the overt religious fundamentalism is a mouthpiece for the Republican party and abuses it's power of influence by lying for the real evil doers down here.

I am not defending those who are well-educated and wealthy who know exactly what they are voting for. But when you see up close how totally manipulated some segments of the South are...totally bamboozled, you would be shocked. I don't have the answer. I do my part by trying to educate people I come in contact with and try to convince them that not all Yankees hate them and they don't all use stereotypes to describe the millions of them.

[trogdor]

18. Don't forget...

...that the unions were violently put down in Dixie back in the old days, often at the behest of the state authorities. Mention the word "union" down there and people get all squirmy. You might as well have asked them to dance with the Devil. These are people conditioned to fear bringers of change, even positive change.

[Atlant]

19. No, it's just that "What goes around comes around".

We New Englanders lost our industrial base to cheap labor.

Now, the South is losing its industrial base to even cheaper labor.

What a surprise. There's *ALWAYS* someone willing to work for less
than you.

Maybe those unions weren't such a bad idea after all? Expecially
since we're now all getting to "hang individually" anyway as a
result of not "hanging together" 'way back when?

Atlant

[progressivejazz]

21. Here's the way it is.

I've lived in the South for 9 years. Still do. And I've had lots of conversations with apolitical Southern acquaintances, friends, and neighbors. And they've told me why industries left the Northeast for the South.

Here's their nearly unanimous opinion: It's all the fault of the liberals and the unions. The liberal-dominated Northeast has an anti-business prejudice. High taxes on businesses and businessmen drove them away. Unreasonable demands by organized labor drove them away. Though both liberalism and unions have done good in the past, they have evolved into asking too much and biting the business hand that feeds them. The South, which is pro-business doesn't have these problems.

They refuse to see the obvious.

When presented with such a perfect example of ironic poetic justice as the subjec of this thread, I'm tempted either to laugh or cry. I'll settle for shaking my lowered head back and forth slowly with a wry smile on my face and an uncomprehending chuckle in my throat.

[Bandit]

22. And they will say that as their jobs move to China

It is Clinton's fault. Didn't you get that memo? Well they can continue to vote Republican and blame Liberals as their quality of life declines and it is Never their own fault What Republican has ever accepted any blame?

[JPace]

24. I think we (America) have come to a new place in history

where being in a union or not, living in the East
or the South, where having nothing but a High School
diploma or a Masters degree is not going to give
anyone an advantage in keeping their job.

I wish the jobs were simply moving domestically to
another part of the country....it is traditional
for Americans to uproot themselves and follow the
work no matter where it was. The American worker
has always been proud, independent and hard working,
but we cannot follow the work overseas and we cannot
make a living on $1.00 an hour pay no matter how much
we cut expenses.

This is a sad day for American worker...they are being
sold out by big business who has nothing but profit
as their goal. The AWOL regime says we need to go back
to school, but what are we supposed to train for? What
is going to bring living wage jobs to millions of
Americans who are being abandoned?

[swinney]

8. NC PLant closes

Breaks my heart.

It truly destroys me.

I know the aching hearts.

I know the fear of the future.

Plant closings are disasters.

[UpInArms]

11. didn't they get the memo that stated

"we are poisoned on the cups"?

edited to correct typos --

should have read:

"we are poised on the cusp"?

[JPace]

15. Asheville NC is getting its first super Walmart next year....

but with 4,600 manufacturing jobs that average $14.00
an hour plus benefits it seem unlikely that they
will all get a job a Walmart even if they wanted
to. So where are these people going to go to work?

The problem is staggering and the families in pain
is tragic.

[young_at_heart]

20. I drove by the new site today and cringed!

All those lost jobs will mean very long lines to get Walmart positions. I can't stand the thought of this new Walmart going up there......and of course, it will always be crowded. Every day the AC-T seems to have more jobs lost.....so painful to read!

[Malva Zebrina]

23. Pretty far behind the c;losing of the mills in Maine, and the shoe

factories. I took a trip once on the black roads of the Connecticut River Valley. Full of abandoned mills, standing there in all their red bricked glory --they were once the hub of the small towns there, and were the reason in the first place for the town's existence.
and-- deserted now,, grown over with weeds , and no population to speak of to ever support turning the sturdy looking mill buildings into something else-such as housing or business office. It has gone by.

All the people, the mill people, have gone--abandoned the towns. I do not know where they went.

All that is left is the brick stalwart structured symbol of a bygone era. And I do not think it will ever be reclaimed.

Nor will the shoe industry in Maine.

Pepperell mills in Biddeford has recently closed also. People in that middle to lower class town have no where else to go.= for work. In desperation, may were hoping that the people of Maine would vote in a casino run by the Indians,(Native Americans--Penobscot) so they could seek employment there. Biddeford is a town that is deteriorating fast.