WisBusiness: Janesville deals with fallout from GM plant closure

Flanked by union representatives and local officials, Gov. Jim Doyle compared the announced Janesville GM plant closing to a “death in the family” and said he would push for GM to consider putting one of its new lines in the plant.

“GM made it clear that this was a plant that they were invested in,” Doyle said. “They brought Barack Obama here just months ago. It was clear that this plant was the pride of GM.”

If the plant does close, Doyle said the state would look into recouping money from the $10 million state grant GM received in 2004.

Brad Dutcher, president of United Auto Workers Local 95, said the plant’s workers want to work hard with GM to see if they could have a future product in Janesville but acknowledged that chances were slim.

“I don’t want to give our workers false hope, but we’re not giving up,” he said. He also said he’s tired of hearing about how old the plant is (production started there in 1919). “The only thing that’s old is the bricks,” he said, pointing out that the inside had been retooled and modernized.

• Read the full story: Officials plan pushback in response to GM plant closing

Union members react to GM shutdown plans

When Pam Good graduated from Craig High School 22 years ago, she considered herself lucky when she landed a job at the General Motors assembly plant here.

“I planned to retire from this place,” said Good, who is an assembler at the sprawling facility and financial secretary for United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 95.

With Tuesday’s announcement that GM will close the Janesville plant in 2010, that dream has been all but snuffed out.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Good, who is 40. “A lot of people I know are devastated. It’s terrible news.”

Good blamed high gas prices, which make driving the large SUVs that are produced in Janesville too expensive for many Americans who are shifting to smaller, less expensive vehicles. Sales of the SUVs and trucks that were once GM’s money makers have fallen significantly in recent months.

Union leaders Brad Dutcher, president of the Local 95; and John Dohner Jr., head of the local’s bargaining committee – as well as Gov. Jim Doyle – said they would push GM to build light cars at the Janesville plant.

They all warned, however, that the chances of that happening are slim.

Bill Smith, another assembler at the plant, said he was shocked by the news of the coming shutdown of the nearly 100-year-old factory. But not that surprised.

“They’ve talked about this for years, but when it finally happens it really hits hard,” he said. “You always figure that things will bounce back even if they end one shift like they announced they’d do a month or so ago.

“But if the plant is closed, there’s no bouncing back,” he said. “Our only hope is to bring another product line here because with the cost of gas so high, I don’t see a lot of people wanting to buy the SUVs that we make. It’s sad, too, they are great vehicles, but the mileage honestly isn’t that great.”

• Read the full story: Union members react to GM shutdown plans

Economic forum addresses impact for Rock County

Participants in a WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com forum on the economy said that while the GM plant closing would be a blow to Janesville and Rock Co. in the short term, it may prove to be a long-term opportunity to further diversify economically as Kenosha did after Chrysler closed its plant in that southeastern Wisconsin city in the 1980s.

Also softening the blow to Rock County is that a lot of its residents work in the Madison metro area or in service businesses unrelated to the plant. Participants suggested the plant closing won’t be the blow it would have been 20 years ago.

“It won’t be the disaster that it would have been,” said Edgewood College economics Prof. Bill Duddleston.

But in closing remarks, NFIB-Wisconsin’s Bill Smith said that while “some opportunity” may come from the Janesville plant closing, “clearly small businesses are going to be impacted.”

 
Most panelists also said despite the slowdown in the economy, the state itself wasn’t in a recession. Department of Revenue economist John Koskinen pointed to the state’s dipping unemployment rate, for example. And First Weber CEO James Imhoff said despite national housing woes, state real estate numbers in 2007 were still historically high and not as bad as many media report suggested.

But state Rep. Patricia Strachota, R-West Bend, said of her constituents: “It may not be a recession, but they are feeling the pain.”

Scott Lockard, the Madison market president of U.S. Bank, also participated in the panel discussion.

The event was sponsored by AARP and was recorded for later broadcast by WisconsinEye.

• Video: WisPolitics/WisBusiness Economic Forum gauges GM decison

What now for Janesville?

Janesville will need a long-term approach if it’s to recover from the idling of the General Motors facility there and the expected loss of 2,600 jobs, former Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said.

Kenosha went through a similar situation 20 years ago, after Chrysler purchased American Motors and shut down the car assembly plant in that city, cutting some 5,000 jobs.

Antaramian, who was in the state Assembly when the plant shut down and won the first of his four terms as mayor in 1992, said Kenosha’s first move was to meet with the company to determine what Chrysler was willing to do to help the workers who lost their jobs and the community at large. The company continues to operate an engine assembly plant in the city, and Antaramian said it stepped up to help those workers who lost their jobs.

The city then began to assess what it needed in terms of economic development opportunities and worked with the state to take advantage of available programs. He said Kenosha immediately began to look at smaller industries it could bring in quickly to help offset the loss of the Chrysler jobs. The city eventually began to attract a number of food processing plants and created some industrial parks to help bring in other businesses.

He said the community is in many ways stronger than it was 20 years ago because its economy is more diversified. But the city is still trying to bring wages rates back to where it was before Chrysler shut down.

“There are a lot of good things that have happened in the past 20 years, but you have to look at the cost to the people at what the cost was to the community,” he said. “Are we better off? I think the community is better diversified and strong, but there were a lot of people who were hurt.”