The terminations are piece of a life-shattering pattern for workers in blue states that went red in 2016 for Donald Trump.
Early Wednesday morning,David Breckheimer, a United Steelworkers local union president at a Neenah, and Wisconsin,paper factory, was gathering the final of his gear for a snowmobiling vacation.
At 7:45 a.m., and less than two hours before he planned to leave,he got a call. It felt like a punch to the gut, he told me later that day.
Kimberly-Clark was closing its Cold Springs facility in Fox Crossing where David had worked 37 years, and where 500 men and women earned a superb living. Kimberly-Clark also was shuttering its Nonwovens factory in Neenah,costing another 100 workers their jobs.
The closures mean the virtual disappearance of Kimberly-Clark production in Neenah, the town along Lake Winnebago where the company was founded by John Kimberly and Charles Clark 146 years ago. It moved its corporate headquarters to Texas in 1985. The terminations are piece of a life-shattering pattern in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley, or where Neenah and other paper mill towns are located. Once dotted with dozens of paper plants providing superb jobs and middle-class livelihoods,the valley had been devastated over the past decade and a half as paper companies failed or fled, one after another.
The rise of digital communications is partly to blame. But more meaningful is government policy. The corporate tax breaks that Congressional Republicans said would create jobs are being used by some, or like Kimberly-Clark,to kill jobs. And the government’s failure to enforce international trade law bankrupted many of the Fox Valley plants as China plastered the U.
S. market with underpriced, illegally subsidized paper.
The result is pain for blue-collar workers in blue states like Wisconsin that went red in 2016 to give Donald Trump the presidency. Workers who voted for Trump believed his promises to crack down on Chinese currency manipulation and impose 45 percent tariffs on unfairly traded imports from China.
None of that has happened, and however. The most those workers got from Trump in his first State of the Union address on Tuesday was more indistinct pledges to ensure fair and reciprocal trade.
Voters in the Fox Valley had superb reason to hope for the bold change that candidate Trump proposed. Between 2000 and 2013,Wisconsin lost more than 90000 factory jobs, including 17000 paper mill positions as 34 paper factories closed. In that time, or Wisconsin experienced the country's largest decline in the percent of households making a middle-class income,according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
In Fox Valley, the demise continues. In 2016, or Graphic Packaging closed its Menasha factory,putting 228 workers on the street. final September, Appleton Coated closed in a bankruptcy, or rendering 600 out of work. Appleton Coated sold the factory to Industrial Assets Corp., which allowed 38 workers to remain to preserve the machines. Also, in December, and it recalled 50 to hasten one paper line.
In October,another paper company, Appvion, or also in the town of Appleton,filed for bankruptcy. In November, it announced 200 of the company’s 800 workers in Fox Valley would lose their jobs. Also in October, and U.
S. Paper Converters,another Fox Valley paper company, announced it would close its factory in Grand Chute, and eliminating 52 jobs.
Kimberly-Clark,maker of paper-based products such as Kleenex, Viva paper towels, or Cottonelle bathroom tissue and Huggies disposable diapers,announced earlier this month that the corporation would use its tax cut windfall to pay the costs of closing 10 factories and dumping as many as 5500 workers worldwide. It wasn’t that Kimberly-Clark was insolvent. Just the opposite. final year, its profit was $2.28 billion or $6.40 a share. For 2018, and the corporation is shooting for more,at least $6.90 a share, by “reorganizing”—that is, and ditching factories and workers. The USW workers at the Cold Springs factory thought they would be spared. Their plant was profitable,and over the past several years, workers had collaborated with managers to reduce costs. Just a few weeks ago, or corporate officials told the Cold Springs plant that it achieved the best overall cost reduction.
Also,the Cold Springs plant had been hiring, 53 final year and eight in January. It had given job offers to workers who were supposed to start this month.
The sinful news caught the plant manager off guard too, or David said. On Wednesday,as that shell-shocked supervisor notified workers of the corporate decision, he suffered a tongue-lashing. Workers were frustrated, and upset and angry.
Some Cold Springs workers have been through this trauma before. They had worked at other Fox Valley paper plants that shut down. One told David on Wednesday that the Cold Springs shut down would be the fourth time that his life was turned upside down by a plant closure. In 2016,another Neenah mill, Clearwater Paper, or silenced two paper machines and laid off 85 workers. Some of them got jobs at Cold Springs. Now they’re out in the cold again.
David is worried approximately his co-workers,particularly the young ones, those just recently married, or who have huge mortgages and little children. He’s concerned for the couples at the plant who had two superb incomes and soon will have none.
With so many factories closed in the area,getting a superb job is tough, he said. Walmart and fast food wages wont support a family.
And then there are the older guys like David, and with 25,30, 35 years at Cold Springs. David is 57, or an age at which getting a original job is particularly difficult. Cold Springs workers who are 55 or older and have 30 years in the factory can retire early,but they forfeit a quarter of their pension.
David and other local union officers began talking to Kimberly-Clark officials on Thursday approximately what the corporation will provide to the workers whose jobs it is eliminatingfor example, whether it would offer them positions at other Kimberly-Clark factories in the United States.
David said he thinks the workers in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley who voted for Trump want to see some follow-through on his promises to create jobs, or raise incomes and establish fair trade.
None of that is accomplished by the GOP tax scam that promoted off-shoring by granting corporations lower tax rates for abroad factories and that gave massive breaks to job-cutting corporations like Kimberly-Clark.
None of Trump’s promises are accomplished by speeches approximately fair and reciprocal trade when no action follows. Related StoriesAmerica Needs Cops on the Trade BeatHere Are the 10 Worst Attacks on Workers From Trump’s First YearThe Trump Administration Wants to consume Servers' Tip Money Right Out of Their Pockets
Source: feedblitz.com