‘The Last Truck’: HBO Looks at Plant Closing Through Workers’ Eyes

by James Parks, Aug 29, 2009

Just two days before Christmas 2008, workers at the General Motors assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio, watched their livelihood and the lifeblood of their town dry up as their plant shut its doors for good. A new HBO documentary, “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant,” which first airs on Labor Day, offers poignant personal testimony about the impact of the decline of American auto manufacturing on this tight-knit Ohio community.

While the layoffs of the 2,500 workers and 200 management staff was bad enough, thousands more of their friends, neighbors and family would lose their jobs as businesses that serviced the plant—suppliers, restaurants, retail stores—were forced to close for lack of business.

In the documentary, “Popeye,” a toolmaker, simply states what the decline of manufacturing means to him and to the American Dream:

 My grandson will have a worse life than I had.

HBO’s press release about the documentary points out the real extent of the damage from the closing:

…the GM workers lost much more than jobs, including the pride they share in their work and the camaraderie built through the years. To the natives of Moraine and the greater Dayton area, General Motors wasn’t just a car company—it was the lifeblood of the community. 

The plant’s closing reflects the collapse of the U.S. manufacturing and the loss of a nation’s middle class. Over the past few decades, policymakers have systematically dismantled our nation’s manufacturing base through bad tax policies and short-sighted trade agreements that encourage consumption of cheap foreign imports and provide incentives for U.S.-based companies to export jobs.

As a result, some 40,000 U.S. manufacturing plants closed between 2001 and 2008, resulting in the loss of millions of family-supporting jobs. From 2001 to 2007, some 2.3 million jobs were lost just from the nation’s huge trade deficit with China alone.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. A far-reaching national manufacturing policy would place the United States at the center of green jobs creation. It would understand that when manufacturing jobs go away, so does the research and development—and our nation cannot get ahead with such a brain drain. The current economic disaster shows the nation cannot rely on the financial services industry as the generator of its economy.

United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard puts it this way:

If we don’t make things, we will have nothing to export and no jobs to create.

“The Last Truck” examines the final months of the plant through the workers’ eyes as they reflect on their work and consider their next steps. In revealing interviews with people who considered themselves more family than co-workers, the film reveals the emotional toll of losing not just a job, but a sense of self.

Workers like Kim, an electrician, who tearfully says that working at the plant was “the greatest job I ever had.” He recounts how everyone finished their work on the line and followed the last truck until all the work had been done. Then they all came together as a big group, a family saying good-bye.

Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert produced and directed the documentary.

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