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When an Auto Maker Leaves Town Community Needs Good Role Models
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by Mikasi | June 11, 2008 at 02:34 pm
239 views | 10 Recommendations | 2 comments
Janesville got the news a week or two back - General Motors isleaving town. GM is a major employer out that way, giving jobs to 4.3percent of Rock County's work force. and many of these are more thanjust "living wage" jobs. They're the types of jobs than anyAmerican community covets because they pay wages (both directly andindirectly) that give workers a real chance to reach out and grab theAmerican Dream.
Janesville faces a worrisome and uncertain future, one it has towalk into alone. But it doesn't have to do it without a road map. Itcan rely on the experience of another Wisconsin community that facedthe same loss but whose economy didn't just role over and die becauseof it.
KENOSHA— When Chrysler closed its auto assembly plant in Kenosha andeliminated more than 5,000 jobs, many thought the community wouldnever recover.Local residents predicted a skyrocketing unemployment rate, to befollowed by a wave of crime, foreclosures and even suicide.
And then there was Dick Keehn, insisting the plant’s closurewould prove to be a good thing.
“I said Kenosha would be better off in the long run, but I hadto admit it was going to be hard in the short term,” said Keehn,who retired in 2000 after 31 years teaching economics at UW-Parksidein Kenosha. “That’s not a very popular thing to do.”
Today, Keehn believes his predictions were dead-on.
The local economy did not collapse, but it did struggle for a fewyears. The area has welcomed new businesses and residents in the last20 years, and the city has revived its once-ailing downtown.
Most importantly, the local economy is much more stable than itwas during the boom-and-bust-years of American Motors Corp., Keehnsaid.
I moved into Kenosha about 3 years after the the Chryslerdrastically reduced it's work presence. (Contrary to what the storymakes it seem, to this day Chrysler maintains a plant and a workforcethere, though not at near the same level as "back in the day."
This story is important to many of us - even if we don't face thepossibility of losing such a big employer - because the economy ofAmerica is changing radically. We are leaving the age of America asproducer and exporter behind. We're moving from making things toserving and providing things – and this doesn't pay anywhere nearas well.
Simply put, our economic realities need to be rethought and an neweconomic paradigm needs to emerge.
The experiences of Kenosha are not some one size fix all,applicable to every community. But they are one example of how toretool a community as it faces unpleasant choices concerning toughtransitions.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 14:39 on June 11th, 2008
Mikasi, I like this story. It's good stuff.
It's very poignant for these times - thanks!
at 15:23 on June 11th, 2008
Janesville is right down the road (about 70 miles). They've got a long row to hoe, so to speak, but I think it is one a lot of Americans will come to know over the next 25 years.
The world economic picture is changing - the economies of China and India are coming to ascendancy in the next 50 years. We can fight it or we can roll with it, but either way we have to plan with knowledge of the upcoming eco struggles.
A new paradigm of the "American Dream" needs to be put into place. Someone in here posted a story about how some happiness quotient ought replace GDP as a measure of a country's growth. I agree. Let us measure the positive quality of a citizen population and use that as our standard.