(The following story by Emma Graves Fitzsimmons appeared on the Chicago Tribune website on May 29.)
CHICAGO — August Kapusta tries to stay upbeat about losing his job.
He survived when two other factories where he worked closed, but he was younger then. After two decades at Union Tank Car Co. in East Chicago, he nears his 60th birthday visiting job fairs with men half his age and fine-tuning his first résumé.
He chugs along looking for work because he doesn’t have a choice. His wife has a thyroid condition, and he has to find a job with health insurance by the end of summer.
“Nobody wants you when you’re old and gray,” said the Chicago resident. “But you can’t let this be the end of the world. You have to have faith in yourself. You can’t let depression set in.”
Hundreds of East Chicago workers face similar fears about starting over as Union Tank shutters its factory Friday after four decades. The abrupt closing has stung employees, who have watched production move to non-union shops in Texas and Louisiana.
The story of a factory closing is a familiar one, but it is an especially harsh time to be unemployed as fear of recession looms and American job losses total 260,000 so far this year. Meanwhile, the newly unemployed must deal with rising gas and food bills, a stagnant housing market and a tough credit environment.
The welders and machine operators from Union Tank—many of whom never worked elsewhere—enter a labor market in northwest Indiana that has shifted dramatically in the years they spent inside the factory. The region lost more than two-thirds of its 89,000 manufacturing jobs since 1979, severely limiting laborers’ options for finding similar work.
The closing is a blow to the town as another major employer departs. The old industrial area along Railroad Avenue, where the plant was churning out its last sleek tank cars, has lost two other railroad car factories over the years.
“Once we close, I guess they ought to change the name of the street,” said Beverly Gallagher, a 30-year veteran of the plant from Whiting, Ind., and one of a handful of women among more than 400 employees losing their jobs.
The union factory has been one of the largest employers—along with BP, steel mills and casinos—in East Chicago, where half the population is Hispanic and a third is African-American. The once-bustling city has a median household income of $26,500, according to the 2000 census.
Local officials have organized job fairs with the remaining major employers and others, such as Amtrak, to try to absorb the workers.
“This is our economy—one day you have a job, and the next day you don’t,” said city spokesman Damian Rico. “It takes quite a toll on our community. We’re worried because our taxes are hit, and we’re concerned for the families that are devastated because of the closing.”
The Chicago-based Union Tank, a member of The Marmon Group, would not discuss the closing beyond a news release saying that market conditions forced the company to reduce overall production and that the “aging facility” in East Chicago was less efficient. A factory built two years ago in Alexandria, La., and a plant operating near Houston since 1995 will remain open.
Kapusta said he will miss the camaraderie in East Chicago among workers who knew each other for decades.
After work on a recent afternoon, Kapusta drove to a Work One center, a state agency that helps people find jobs in northern Indiana. Nina Butz, an employment specialist, helped him prepare for a job fair. She rattled off the qualifications that she listed on his résumé: “You can interpret blueprints? You are experienced in welding, burning and layout?”
Kapusta nodded yes to each question but was somewhat bewildered by the whole experience, noting computers weren’t around the last time he applied for a job. He reminded Butz about his almost perfect attendance record over 20 years, for which he received the Union Tank jacket he wore that day.
Butz has met with dozens of employees from the factory looking for jobs. Most are around age 50, and they are still in shock and worried about the future, she said.
Their gloom echoes in the neighborhood near the plant. At least half the customers at the Good Times bar are workers from Union Tank, said manager Giselle Torres.
“We get a lot of guys in here during the lunchtime break and when they get out in the afternoon,” she said. “We’ll definitely lose business.”
Kisha McClain, who lives a few homes away from the factory, is unemployed too. She said the city’s economic despair is apparent when she goes shopping and sees elderly people bagging groceries. The factory closing will just make things worse, said McClain, whose grandfather once worked at Union Tank.
“We already [have] no jobs as it is,” said McClain, 30. “These jobs here were one of the last legs we were standing on.”
Jerry Kroll is one of the lucky Union Tank workers. He starts Monday at the nearby Arcelor Mittal steel mill, a place where many of the workers said they would love to land. At 33, he is healthy and able to withstand his physically demanding new job. But he will take a pay cut and have to work some nights, keeping him from his children’s wrestling meets and soccer games. Kroll is just relieved to have something lined up after learning about the closing at a meeting in the plant’s cafeteria in March.
“There were nights I got two hours of sleep,” said the father of four from Munster, Ind. “I want to make sure my kids and my wife don’t go without, and that I don’t lose the house I’m living in and the vehicles we’re driving.”
Many workers already have started to adjust family budgets for the leaner times ahead by eating out less or asking spouses and children to take additional shifts at their jobs. Most employees made $20 an hour at the plant, with good benefits. Some of the 70 salaried and 375 hourly employees will get severance packages, and others expect to live off unemployment checks for a while.
Part of what was special about the East Chicago plant was the pride employees took in their work, they said.
As he left the factory one recent afternoon, Kroll pointed toward a row of finished tank cars and said, “Look at the cars going out now—they’re still coming out quality. Your name is on that tank.”
At the end of the workday, several workers said goodbye to Dave McCoy after his last day at the plant. It was a bitter moment for McCoy, a welder from Westville, Ind., who feels betrayed by the company’s decision to leave after so many employees dedicated their lives to the factory.
“I’ve been here since I was 20 years old, and I’m 40 now,” he said. “I feel like crying, but I’m not going to let them see it.”