Big Bun Wienermobile
Growing up on the east side of Madison, Wisconsin, two companies were ubiquitous to east side life: Gardner Baking, and Oscar Mayer. Both were known for their smells. Nothing smelled better than the aroma of baking bread. I remember rushing home from school to have bread, but it never tasted the same as it smelled. The other aroma, from the Oscar Mayer plant, was not as pleasant. At the time they still had a slaughterhouse, and it wasn't uncommon back then to see an escaped steer or pig walking down a city street, followed by a Madison Police Department cruiser.
Oscar Mayer was one of the largest private employers in Madison at that time, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 employees. If you went to East High School like I did, you either knew someone who worked at Oscar's or you were related to someone who worked at Oscar's.
My dad's first job when he came to Madison after World War II was at Oscar Mayer. He worked in the inedibles department. All the stuff they could not use went through there. My uncle retired from Oscar's in the late 1970s. I have often said that my options coming out of high school were either join the Army or go to work for Oscar Mayer: I went with the Army. But a lot of my friends went to work at Oscar Mayer, a place where with only a high school education, you could get a good union job and make solid money to raise a family with. A lot of those friends still work there today. It's the only job they have ever known.
Oscar Mayer only employs about 1,000 people in Madison these days, but the factory still looms large, a unmistakable part of the skyline on the east side of town. Next door to the plant is Hartmeyer Ice Arena, where high school hockey games are played in the plant's shadow. All of the Weinermobiles have Wisconsin license plates, a source of pride for Madison natives.
All of which made the news that came out on November 4 so hard to take. Oscar Mayer, after more than 100 years of calling Madison home, is closing down Madison operations. The company is moving its headquarters to Chicago, and plant operations to Iowa.
There's more.
"Our decision to consolidate manufacturing across the Kraft Heinz North American network is a critical step in our plan to eliminate excess capacity and reduce operational redundancies for the new combined company," Kraft Heinz said in a statement. "We have reached this difficult but necessary decision after thoroughly exploring extensive alternatives and options."
Doug Leikness, president of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 538, wasn't notified until just after 1:00 PM on Wednesday afternoon of the
plant closing.
"We had no indication," said Doug Leikness, the head of the union representing Oscar Mayer factory workers in Madison. He said union and management officials met Monday and there was no sign a closing would be imminent. "They duped us," he said of Kraft officials, sounding stunned.
The impact of this closure will spread far beyond the workers and their families. Oscar Mayer has been a huge part of the Madison community for decades. The company sponsored our Little League teams, and made sure students at my alma mater, Madison East High School, were not left behind. They helped them
forge a future.
At a luncheon last month at Alliant Energy Center, community leaders taking part in a principal-for-a-day event watched a touching video about Oscar Mayer workers changing the lives of Madison East High School students.
The company had adopted the school, and its employees were doing everything from mentoring students in a club for African-American boys to paying for a record number of students in a business club to attend a state competition.
Madison East Principal Michael Hernandez thought of all of those connections,
plus the sheer human toll:
"How many of our kids, our families, our staff members are connected with this?" he said. "We have to figure out a way to support them, because this ripple is going to be huge."
Madison hasn't simply lost an employer: The city has lost an institution. When plant operations wind down and end in 2017 there will be a big hole to fill. It's not just about the empty building, but the sense of community that Oscar Mayer gave to everyone on Madison's east side. Last Wednesday's announcement was like a kick in the gut. I cannot help but think of my friends who thought they had a job that would take them from high school to retirement. The very idea that Oscar Mayer would ever leave Madison was—and still is—unfathomable.