How Many More Jobs Can Our Country Lose?

Ben Waxman, Labor 2008 state director for Ohio, reports on a lockout at an Ohio auto parts factory.

In January, a Norwegian company bought an auto parts factory in Van Wert, Ohio, renaming it Kongsberg Automotive. Now, the company is trying to break the union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1-524, that represents workers there.  

The wages provided by these union jobs in the factory aren’t sky high—most people make between $14.50 and $17.50 per hour for the skilled work they do. But these wages, which have helped keep the local community’s economy afloat, now are threatened as Kongsberg Automotive (KA) tries to take them away, proposing to pay many workers a near-poverty wage of only $9 an hour.  

To make matters worse, the Van Wert Times Bulletin reports the company already has announced its intention to move 200 of the 326 jobs to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

In the meantime, after a hostile and uncompromising period of “bargaining,” the company locked workers out of the factory with only two days’ notice. This left 330 men and women laid off in tough economic times. Van Wert County already is suffering above-average unemployment for the state. At a rally on Saturday organized by USW Local 1-524, local union President Aaron Collins put the issue in stark terms. 

The question is, how much longer can our country take this outpouring of jobs to Mexico and China before the bottom falls out?

The callousness of KA’s treatment of its workers, and its shameless plan to outsource most of the jobs to a Mexican border town, is symptomatic of many of the problems the American economy is facing today. Our nation is struggling, and we as a people have to make a strong, collective effort to get it back on track.

Kongsberg Automotive workers are waging such a fight today, but they’re up against a powerful transnational corporation with no roots in the community and therefore lacks interest in seeing the community through these hard times. However, the workers hope that over the course of the coming days and weeks, they may be able to persuade Kongsberg’s management to come back to the table. 

We held a rally and march on Saturday to protest Kongsberg’s action. In  a strong display of solidarity, more than 400 people attended, and many unions presented checks to the locked-out union to help them support their families while they are laid off. Individuals supported the local by buying “I Support the Locked Out Employees of Kongsberg” T-shirts and yard signs. You can watch a video of the rally here. 

Joe Rugola, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, pledged that the state federation and his union, OAPSE, would support USW Local 1-524 members. If you’d like to help the workers who are being locked out of their jobs, checks can be made out to USW Local 1-524 and sent to the union at P.O. Box 122, Van Wert, OH 45891. The struggle continues, in Van Wert and around the country, where workers are treated as less important than corporations and thriving communities are the exception, not the rule. 

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