WHEN THE news came, it was hardly a shock. The General Motors plant had been on the verge of collapse for months. Demand for new vehicles had dropped like a stone.
Commentators speculated darkly that hundreds of thousands of workers’ livelihoods were on the line.
“All those worries were there,” says Karen Eusario (43), who was let go from the assembly plant at Lordstown. “I’m a single mom. How would I pay the mortgage, the bills, let alone all those everyday precious things like sports for the kids. It was terrifying.”
The GM assembly plant has more employees than the entire population of Lordstown, a village whose population is spread out among the cornfields and soya bean plantations. But its influence spreads right across the Mahoning Valley of northeast Ohio.
The plant feeds an entire eco-system of smaller employers in the region from the engine the transmission systems in Toledo, the engine in the city of Defiance, the metal from Parma, speakers from Springboro and aluminium wheels from Cleveland, right down to small restaurants such as Ross’s Eatery Pub, which gets three-quarters of its business from workers at the Lordstown facility.
“Everyone around here was pretty worried, “ says Lordstown’s Republican mayor, Arno Hill. “The plant has basically carried the valley around here.”
That was in summer of 2009. Months later, President Obama decided to provide $60 billion in government assistance to see Chrysler and GM through bankruptcy. The plan was fiercely opposed by Mitt Romney and other Republicans who argued that managed bankruptcy and restructuring were needed before any government involvement to ensure long-term success for the industry.
Today, the once-threatened “big three” – Chrysler and General Motors, which were both bailed out, and Ford which recovered on its own – are all adding working, making profits, increasing market share.
Both Chrysler and GM are also paying back their taxpayer loans.
“One in eight jobs in Ohio is tied to the auto industry,” said Michele Martin, a spokeswoman with the United Auto Workers union.
“Every job is a real person with a real story.” The viability of US car industry and manufacturing in general is now defining the presidential race in Ohio, a state that no Republican has ever won the White House without.
This area has experienced the debate first-hand. It lost some 400,000 manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2009. Since the bail-out, it has added more than 50,000 new manufacturing jobs.
Obama argues that the government action helped save jobs and boosted the economy. Unemployment in Ohio has now fallen below the national average to 7 per cent, and car manufacturers say they plan to hire anything up to 200,000 workers over the coming years.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, insists the industry would have recovered anyway and says job growth is linked to policies in the region adopted by the state’s Republican governor, John Kasich.
But to most Ohioans here, this is that rarest of things: a government programme that actually worked. While many suspect that the government intervenes mostly for the poor or the super-rich, this has been a financial reform that has bolstered the middle-class.
At Lordstown, the signs of prosperity are easy to see. Three years ago, the owner of Ross’s Eatery Pub says he was worried about his future. Now Earl Ross says business is booming. The restaurant runs from dawn to after midnight, to cater to the extra shifts at the plant.
He employs 20 people, up from the three family members just a couple of years ago, and supplies the plant’s workers with burgers, chicken wings and his best-selling $6.99 Philly steak sandwich.
Mayor Arno Hill says the number of mortgage foreclosures in the area has also reduced significantly while there is a new-found confidence in the area.
Just last week, McDonalds announced it is building a giant one-acre deep-freeze warehouse which it will use to supply hundreds of its restaurants in the wider region.
This is quite a turnaround for an area that seemed in terminal decline ever since the energy crisis of the 1970s. Most of the steel mills in the area closed, as did other firms that supplied them. There were also pitched battles between unions and employers in the car industry.
At the GM plant, hostility led to a 22-day strike that cost the plant’s owner a fortune in lost sales. The term “Lordstown syndrome” became shorthand for rebellious factory workers. The population of cities in the area such as Youngstown almost halved in the past 30 years as traditional employers closed or relocated overseas.
Today, though, there is a new sense of hope. The Chevy Cruze, which is manufactured at Lordstown’s GM plant, was the best-selling car in the US last month.
In addition, the company is planning to invest hundreds of millions of dollars at the facility in preparation for the next model of the car.
For workers such as Karen Eusario, there are reasons to be optimistic.
She was rehired after the bailout and “danced around the living room” after hearing the news.
But life can still be a struggle. She earns $28 an hour. It’s a decent wage, but as a single parent there often isn’t much left after the mortgage, petrol and other expenses are deducted. But it’s a world away from the worries and stress of unemployment.
“We’re building a high-quality car. People like it, it’s a top-selling model. No one can foresee the future, but the way things are going, I dare to say that it’s looking good.”
