Conversation with United Electrical Workers'

Carl Olsen

Carl Olsen was president of a UE local representing workers at the J.C. Rhoads metal stamping company in New Bedford, Massachusetts -- until the plant was shut down last May. In their fight to keep the plant open, Olsen and his co-workers tried to get the state to take over the facility under a law known as "eminent domain."

What was your job at the plant, and what did the plant produce?

I was a full-time metal handler and forklift operator. I worked there close to 19 years. The company made metal stampings -- everything from brake shoe eyelets for General Motors to battery caps for EverReady.

Why did your plant close down?

We were bought out by an outside firm from Georgia that thought they could pay half the wages and make more profits if they moved the plant to Georgia. The plant had been in New Bedford for 120 years, and it had never lost money during its whole existence -- not in any month, in any year. Until we lost the eminent domain fight, we were going full blast -- we were doing overtime and everything.

We told the new owners that we were a highly skilled workforce, and we told them that all the machinery we used was made and patented here in New Bedford -- there's no other machinery in the world like it, and it would take three to five years to train people to be proficient on these machines. We tried to tell them all that, and they wouldn't hear it, and so they shut the factory down and moved it down to Georgia, and to date they've lost over 75 percent of the business. And they're probably going to lose the whole thing, because they can't get anything running.

How many workers did the plant employ before it shut down?

At the time of the shutdown, there were 84 union workers and another 34 or so office management people. The average worker there had 23 years of service.

What's "eminent domain"?

It's the taking of public or private property for the good of the community, and it's in the law for communities to use.

For us, "the public good" meant the maintaining of jobs and income.

We hired a big law firm and we researched the case. Our argument was that this was a profitable company that had provided good-paying jobs with benefits, and the only reason it was being moved was for a group of corporate stockholders to make more money. That was it -- it wasn't because we were losing money or the cost of business was too high. They could have maintained the ownership here and still made money. It was strictly to line the pockets of already wealthy individuals.

We needed to get the City Council to agree to use eminent domain to take the plant over. And we went further than anyone in this country's ever gone on eminent domain -- we were one vote shy of getting it. One City Councilman -- we had his vote, and then he changed it at the last minute. And so the plant closed down back in May.

What's happened to your co-workers since the plant closed -- have they found other jobs?

It's been a real nightmare. A few people have been fortunate enough to find some

decent jobs. About half the workers are going through a state job training program -- a federally funded program administered by the state. But even that's been a nightmare, because they've run out of money -- there's no money left to send people to school. A great many people have been frustrated in their attempts to find work. All the manufacturers around here are hiring temporaries with no benefits -- no holidays, no insurance. If you look through our want ad pages, I'd say 50 to 60 percent of the jobs are with temp agencies. And they seem to be using temps now as a fill-in, to meet the demand. Then when the demand's over, they get rid of 'em.

Meanwhile, the unemployment insurance has been running out on people, and there are no extensions available. So some people have been forced to take six- or seven-dollar-an-hour jobs. The wages around here have been driven down so much by the high unemployment.

What is the unemployment level in New Bedford?

We have the highest unemployment in the state of Massachusetts -- double digit. In the past ten years, New Bedford has lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs -- and that's in a city of 100,000. And New Bedford has always been very big in the fishing industry, and that's been taking a big hit too. So it's really terrible here. Unless you want to be a full-time WalMart employee. Those are the only jobs that seem to be springing up.

People are upset and fed up, and their opportunities are shrinking. Not only that, the wages are shrinking too. And people are really scared. Because meanwhile the rents and the cost of living are going up, and nothing's keeping pace with it.

So the Labor Party's demand for a guaranteed job at a living wage would probably make a lot of sense to people there.

Oh, overwhelming support. Our workers are very excited about the long-term prospect of somebody finally speaking up for working people.

What's your own situation?

I started attending school in January with the state retraining program -- I signed up early enough that there's still money available for me. I'm going into waste water treatment. Unfortunately, my wife worked at the plant too -- she was a secretary there. So now she's retraining too, as a medical secretary. We've been scrimping and saving and going without -- falling behind.

Still, it's good that you fought so hard to keep your plant open.

Yeah, we waged a very intensive campaign to keep our jobs here. We brought our fight to the community -- even with a relatively small shop of 120 people. And people were so sympathetic to our cause, they were so outraged over the plant closings that we were able, over the space of three weekends, to collect over 40,000 signatures supporting our drive.

Thank God for the UE for being that kind of union. They train you that way, to not take anything lying down. Because we've seen so many plant closings in the city of New Bedford where all you see is a one or two-line story in the paper, and then it's just gone.

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