The Janesville, Wisconsin, GM plant is closing on December 23. Nice timeing, eh? This has been planned for some time, due to lowered demand for SUVs, which are assembled in Janesville, and GMs desire to cut costs. The Janesville employees are obviously in a very difficult situation.
However, what is not fully appreciated by many, and apparently not at all by 35 Senate Republicans, is the cascading economic devastation that occurs when one of these plants shuts down.
Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an excellent article describing the Ripple Effects of the Janesville plant closure. This may be repeated near every Big 3 plant in the US. Thank you very much Bitch McConnell.
We've been hearing about the auto suppliers who are going to shut down if the auto industry closes up shop, but the effects will be much, much wider:
The closing of the Janesville plant is like a slow-motion economic crash. For most of the 1,200 workers left at the plant, their last day on the job will be Dec. 23. They'll join around 3,000 others who have lost auto-related jobs in the area since June.
The closure may ultimately end up costing Rock County nearly 9,000 jobs, according to estimates compiled by Steve Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Using a multiplier effect, Deller says almost every sector in the county may suffer some job losses, everything from construction to real estate to retail to health services.
The article gets into specific, personal details about the effects on different businesses in Janesville. The politicians do not consider the 'workers' human, it seems, to so callously torpedo their jobs, over of all things their wages. Further, they do not comprehend the full extent of the effects of the economy if the industry really goes down for good.
Patricia Torner, 46, a pipe fitter at the Janesville plant, is keeping her options open. In many ways, the fate of Janesville is tied to people like Torner, who is divorced and raising her 10-year-old granddaughter.
With 22 years in at GM, she'll take a job transfer to another plant, if she can get it. If not, she'll attend college, trying to fast-track 56 credit hours she'll need toward an undergraduate degree in psychology and social work.
If Torner leaves, her chiropractor will be down one patient, her hair dresser will miss one client, the veterinarian who takes care of her two dogs will suffer a loss. And, of course, Janesville schools will be losing one more pupil, Torner's granddaughter.
Last month, she took her granddaughter on a tour of the plant, in what was dubbed Heritage Days, a last chance for the general public to see the assembly line in operation.
"As we're riding around the plant, I'm waving to people I know and I thought, this is it, this is truly it," Torner says. "It brought me to tears. I realized at that moment, we're done."
I am not here to defend Rick Wagoner, Bob Nardelli or anyone else, and I am as pissed about the economic situation and bailouts as anyone. But to let this happen for political reasons, when it's possible to intervene, is just unconscionable. That would be true even in good economic times, but with so many already out of work and vulnerable, it's that much worse. As Michael Moore asks, "Who are we?"