The Age of Inequality: Corporate America's War on Working People

By Jeremy Gantz, Senator Bernie Sanders, Arundhati Roy and 2 more

The stories behind the inequality crisis—a forty-year investigation by In These Times

With heart-wrenching reporting and incisive analysis, In These Times magazine has charted a staggering rise in inequality and the fall of the American middle class. Here, in a selection from four decades of articles by investigative reporters and progressive thinkers, is the story of our age. It is a tale of shockingly successful corporate takeovers stretching from Reagan to Trump, but also of brave attempts to turn the tide, from the Seattle global justice protests to Occupy to the Fight for 15.

Featuring contributions from Michelle Chen, Noam Chomsky, Tom Geoghegan, Juan González, David Moberg, Salim Muwakkil, Ralph Nader, Frances Fox Piven, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Slavoj iek, and many others, The Age of Inequality is the definitive account of a defining issue of our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verso
• Release date: Apr 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781786631169

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THE AGE OF INEQUALITY

THE AGE OF INEQUALITY

Corporate America’s War on Working People

A FORTY-YEAR INVESTIGATION

BY IN THESE TIMES

First published by Verso 2017

© In These Times 2017

Editor’s Introduction © Jeremy Gantz 2017

Contributions © The contributors 2017

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-114-5

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-115-2 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-116-9 (US EBK)

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset in Minion Pro by MJ&N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall

Printed in the US by Maple Press

Contents

Acknowledgments

Editor’s Introduction by Jeremy Gantz

PART ONE: GROWING APART

1 Trading Away the Working Class

Introduction by Kari Lydersen

Youngstown Steel Plant Deliberately Abandoned

Daniel Marschall (1977)

U.S. Multinationals Make Labor Put on Its Fighting Shoes

John Judis (1977)

Fear and Loathing on the Chrysler Assembly Line

W. P. Norton (1988)

Run for the Border

David Moberg (1993)

Train in Vain

John Judis (1994)

Factory Collapse in Bangladesh Exposes Cracks in the System

Michelle Chen (2013)

This Small Town Shows Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Could Be a Disaster for American Workers

Peter Cole (2015)

Our Choices Aren’t Only Xenophobic Nationalism or Neoliberal Globalization

Leon Fink (2016)

2 The Rich Change the Rules

Introduction by Rick Perlstein

The Business of the U.S. Is…

John Judis (1978)

Dems Are Becoming Governing Wing of the GOP

Manning Marable (1979)

Whose Side Are Tax Cutters On?

John Judis (1981)

Reaganomics: One Down, Three to Go

Richard B. Du Boff (1982)

The Poor Still Getting Poorer

David Moberg (1984)

Women’s Common Ground

Frances Fox Piven (1984)

Stuck in the Middle With You

David Futrelle (1993)

Welcome to New Orleans

David Sirota (2005)

We Are All Waiters Now

Thomas Geoghegan (2006)

The Failed Prophet

Sen. Bernie Sanders (2009)

Oligarchy in the U.S.A.

Jeffrey A. Winters (2012)

Who Is John Galt? Now We Know!

Slavoj Žižek (2013)

3 Busted: The Decline of Unions

Introduction by Nelson Lichtenstein

Labor Movement: Stuck but Stirring

David Moberg (1976)

Equal Time for Union-Busting Firms

Richard Kazis (1980)

As PATCO Goes, So Go the Unions

David Moberg (1981)

Labor’s Problems Are the Nation’s Problems

Nicholas von Hoffman (1981)

To Concede or Not to Concede

David Moberg (1982)

Striking People in a Sticky Situation

David Moberg (1986)

Working It Out

David Moberg (1993)

Lexus and the Right to Pee

Barbara Ehrenreich (1999)

Southern Bellwether

Ian Urbina (2002)

All Apart Now

David Moberg (2005)

Symbol of the System

Christopher Hayes (2005)

Not Your Parents’ Labor Movement

David Moberg (2009)

Capitol Offensive

David Moberg (2011)

4 Blowing Bubbles: The Rise of Finance

Introduction by Dean Baker

Bank Deregulation Threatens Stability

David M. Kotz (1986)

Bush’s S&L Plan Would Make Us Pay Twice

James Weinstein (1989)

Easy Money

Ralph Nader (1996)

Easy Money and the Rest of Us

Juan González (1998)

Enronomics 101

David Moberg (2002)

Bursting Bubbles: Why the Economy Will Go From Bad to Worse

Dean Baker (2003)

The Subprime Bait and Switch

Alexander Gourse (2007)

Killer Credit

Adam Doster (2008)

The Only Road Out of Crisis

Joseph M. Schwartz (2009)

A New Strategy to Make the Banks Pay

Laura Gottesdiener (2014)

5 Public Goods, Private Hands

Introduction by Thomas Geoghegan

Central American Refugees for Profit

Dennis Bernstein and Connie Blitt (1986)

Corporate Caseworkers

Adam Fifield (1997)

War Profiteering and You

Christopher Hayes (2004)

Publicopoly Exposed

Beau Hodai (2011)

Privatizing Government Services Doesn’t Only Hurt Public Workers

David Moberg (2014)

How to Sell Off a City

Rick Perlstein (2015)

6 Welcome to the Precariat

Introduction by Rebecca Burns

Cab Companies Use Leasing to Boost Profits

David Moberg (1976)

Marginal Work Is on the Rise as Traditional Jobs Evaporate

Robert B. Carson (1977)

Immigrants Sweat It Out in Illegal Garment Factories

Doug Turetsky (1990)

Life of Leisure Evading the American Worker?

David Moberg (1992)

Temp Slave Revolt

David Moberg (2000)

Hey Millennials, Debt Becomes You

Mischa Gaus (2006)

For Disgruntled Young Workers, Lawsuits May Spark Intern Insurrection

Michelle Chen (2013)

The Wage-Theft Epidemic

Spencer Woodman (2013)

Forever Temp?

Sarah Jaffe (2014)

An Udderly Bad Job

Joseph Sorrentino (2014)

Domestic Workers Emerging From the Shadows

Stephen Franklin (2014)

The Adjunct’s Lament

Rebecca Burns (2014)

INTERLUDE

In Search of Solidarity

Christopher Hayes (2006)

PART TWO: PUSHBACK

7 Solidarity Without Borders

Introduction by Michelle Chen

Time Bombs

Noam Chomsky (1994)

Making History

David Bacon (2000)

Wall Done

David Graeber (2001)

Take It to the Streets

Naomi Klein (2001)

Another World Is Possible

Ben Ehrenreich (2003)

People vs. Empire

Arundhati Roy (2005)

Freedom of Movement

Michelle Chen (2009)

This Land Is Our Land

Micah Uetricht (2010)

All Over the World, Migrants Demand the Right to Stay at Home

David Bacon (2013)

No Papers, No Fear

Michelle Chen (2013)

The Immigration Movement’s Left Turn

Michelle Chen (2014)

Are Open Borders the Solution to the Refugee Crisis?

Michelle Chen (2015)

8 The Black Freedom Struggle, at the Ballot and Beyond

Introduction by Salim Muwakkil

Washington Still Has a Hard Row to Hoe

David Moberg (1983)

Jackson’s Ascent and the Dynamic of Racism

Salim Muwakkil (1988)

Advocating Drug Decriminalization a Tough Stand in Black Community

Salim Muwakkil (1990)

Being Black in America: The Quiet Riot Continues

Donell Alexander (1992)

Proud of Obama … for Now

Salim Muwakkil (2008)

The ‘Post-Racial’ President

Salim Muwakkil (2009)

From Hope to Disposability

Martha Biondi (2013)

In Baltimore and Across the Country, Black Faces in High Places Haven’t Helped Average Black People

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2015)

9 Labor’s Fate: New Solutions to Old Problems, Old Solutions to New Problems

Introduction by Micah Uetricht

Cleaning House

Zack Nauth (1995)

Face-off at UPS

Jane Slaughter (1997)

Too Cruel for School

David Moberg (2002)

Doing It for Themselves

Mischa Gaus (2007)

Democratic to the CORE

Micah Uetricht and Jasson Perez (2012)

Even Without Unions, Walmart Warehouse Employees Win Change

David Moberg (2013)

Is Fight for 15 for Real?

Micah Uetricht (2013)

Big Business Aims to Crush Worker Centers

Micah Uetricht (2013)

A Co-op State of Mind

Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo (2014)

Bringing Back the Strike May Be Our Only Hope

Shaun Richman (2016)

10 After the Crash: Searching for Alternatives

Introduction by Frances Fox Piven

Take the Fight to the Streets

Stephen Lerner (2011)

An Occupy Road Trip

Arun Gupta (2011)

Voices From the Occupation

Jeremy Gantz (2011)

The Violent Silence of a New Beginning

Slavoj Žižek (2011)

No Vacancies: Squatters Move In

Rebecca Burns (2012)

Anti-Foreclosure Activists Put BlackRock in a Hard Place

Sarah Jaffe (2013)

Can Socialists Win Elections in the U.S.?

Bhaskar Sunkara and Micah Uetricht (2013)

Bringing Socialism Back

Joseph M. Schwartz (2015)

From Hashtag to Strategy: The Growing Pains of Black Lives Matter

Bill Fletcher, Jr. (2015)

Black Lives Matter Puts Prosecutors on Trial

Jennifer Ball (2016)

The Radicalism of Black Lives Matter

Martha Biondi (2016)

Contributors

Index

Acknowledgments

This book started as an idea I proposed to In These Times editor and publisher Joel Bleifuss during an issue release party in January 2015. That he immediately expressed interest and subsequently allowed me to pass forty years of archives through the filter of my own interests is a testament to his generous spirit.

One of the most satisfying things about editing this book has been how the process reconnected me to In These Times, where I once worked as associate editor. Exploring the archives in depth confirmed what I had long assumed: the magazine’s coverage was unusually perceptive (and prescient) from the beginning, and money to keep the enterprise going has always been scarce. Seeing founder James Weinstein’s full-throated fundraising appeals in so much faded newsprint reminded me that In These Times has always been more of a mission than a business. Its relative longevity—most political magazines don’t make it to middle age—is proof of its uniquely valuable role on the American Left.

Despite many hours reading the archives, editing this book has hardly been a solitary experience. Many thanks to Diana Finch, In These Times’ book agent, for helping me turn my ideas into a coherent proposal and then, of course, finding a publisher. Thanks to Rebecca Burns, Micah Uetricht, and especially In These Times executive editor Jessica Stites for helping to improve the book’s structure, suggesting pieces to include and never ignoring my various requests. Thanks to the other In These Times staff members who provided input and feedback: Christopher Hass, Miles Kampf-Lassin, and Ketseeyah Yosef. And thanks to Andy Hsiao at Verso for gently telling me what was missing.

Many thanks to all the In These Times interns who collectively helped gather the archival material: Princess-India Alexander, Parker Asmann, Jennifer Ball, Caroline Beck, Tom Burnett, Julia Clark-Riddell, Marc Daalder, Lauren Gaynor, Karen Gwee, Lorenzo Gudino, Rachelle Hampton, Colin Hanner, Dayton Martindale (now an assistant editor at the magazine), Eli Massey, Regina Tanner, and Katie Way. And thanks to Ron Unz, who generously digitized most of the magazine archives back in 2005.

To all of the magazine’s writers, whether in this book or not: thank you for telling stories that matter.

Finally, to Caitlin. Your unwavering support (often in the form of solo parenting) throughout this book’s long gestation leaves me without words.

Happy fortieth anniversary, In These Times.

Editor’s Introduction

JEREMY GANTZ

Inequality is timeless; the danger it poses to any society varies by degree. The title of this book therefore could, I suppose, refer to almost any period of time. A central tension courses throughout the history of the United States, between the promise of equal opportunity—we were all created equal, right?—and the reality of inequality. The great struggles of U.S. history, from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, have at their core been fights over the gap between this promise and reality.

Yet since the late 1970s, as the economy globalized and the rich grew much richer, this gap has widened dramatically. More and more Americans admit this and are refusing to tolerate growing divides as the inevitable cost of globalization. But thirty-five years before the Occupy movement drew the public’s attention to a broken system, and forty years before presidential candidates across the political spectrum acknowledged inequality as a problem, In These Times was on the case. Launching an independent socialist weekly, founding editor and publisher James Weinstein looked forward to covering a growing left movement buoyed by the election of Jimmy Carter. Instead, his magazine would chronicle a faltering movement, a newly conservative political era, and the emergence of the country’s new gilded age. With a mission to expose the struggles of the powerless, In These Times was well positioned to report on a government and economy more and more tilted toward the powerful.

U.S. incomes began growing more unequal in 1979, and money has been flowing upward ever since. Fast-forward nearly forty years, and:

• The richest 1 percent of Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

• The richest .01 percent of Americans controls 22 percent of the wealth, up from 7 percent in the late 1970s.

• The country’s median household income (adjusted for inflation) is less today than it was in 1989.

More and more Americans are aware of the wealth disparity that now characterizes the country. But while these numbers make clear who has been winning the class war—as Warren Buffet has said, it’s his side—they don’t show us how inequality grew since the 1970s and what it felt like to be left behind. They don’t show us the lives of striking workers permanently replaced by union-busting companies. They don’t show us fast-food workers impoverished by a stagnant minimum wage or the migrant farm laborers making less than that wage. They don’t show us the army of permatemps and independent contractors that corporations have raised to avoid providing the benefits that middle-class Americans once expected as their birthright.

Many books about the growth of inequality illuminate the problem through historical data and research. This book takes a different approach, collecting In These Times articles from the last forty years to show why the country became so unequal so quickly—and how people pushed back against this trend. Think of it as a real-time narrative of a still-unfolding man-made disaster: a history of the present. In the introductions to each chapter, longtime contributors and current editors reflect on the view from 2017.

Part One examines the causes and effects of growing inequality. These include a globalizing economy and free trade agreements, which have decimated U.S. manufacturing jobs (Chapter 1); a government increasingly tilted toward the wealthy (Chapter 2); and the decline of the labor movement, a singular bulwark of the middle class (Chapter 3). The rise of the financial industry and deregulation are the subject of Chapter 4, while Chapter 5 looks at privatization, an often-overlooked culprit abetted by the same free market fetishization on display in preceding chapters. Finally, Chapter 6 captures what all this has meant for many U.S. workers: precarity.

In Search of Solidarity, Christopher Hayes’ interlude following Part One, underscores that movements for change are built upon a sense of shared struggle. While the idea of solidarity has become increasingly anachronistic in recent decades, many people have refused to accept inequality. In Part Two, we focus on those who have pushed for change—struggles that In These Times has reported from the front lines, providing an inside take on movements as they unfolded.

Intensifying globalization has both undermined and heightened the power of borders, sparking transnational solidarity and protest. Chapter 7 focuses on the global justice (antiglobalization) and migrant rights movements. In the United States, as elsewhere, race and class are inescapably intertwined. African Americans, hamstrung by the legacies of slavery and the Jim Crow era, have long borne the brunt of growing economic inequality. Their struggles against uniquely violent oppression prompt Chapter 8, which focuses on the course of the black freedom movement since the early 1980s. We look at the mixed record of that movement’s electoral focus, along with how black leaders have responded to the pernicious effects of the war on drugs. Chapter 9 looks at strategies and tactics for building worker power that have emerged in recent decades—some of them novel, others a return to the militancy that defined the labor movement’s early history. Finally, Chapter 10 focuses on movements and political campaigns that have challenged our unequal order since the recent financial crash exposed the economy for what it is: broken. From Occupy to Black Lives Matter to Bernie Sanders, radical change is starting to look more attractive to many.

Although more than one hundred articles are collected here—virtually all condensed from their original versions—this book is by no means a greatest hits collection. The breadth and depth of In These Times coverage has always extended far beyond ground covered here, which is just one path through rich archives comprising the news of the day.

If reversing inequality is the great challenge of our time, then the great mystery of our time is why so many people for so long seemed to accept a new reality that demands more work for less money. James Weinstein offered a big clue in the magazine’s inaugural issue in 1976. Capitalism is the unspoken reality of American politics, he wrote. That is the one thing the major parties agree upon: Praise capitalism (not too often and preferably by another name) but don’t discuss it. Preclude serious discussion of the central reality of our times.

In recent years the reality of American politics and inequality is being articulated more and more. The Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements and the surreal ruptures of the 2016 presidential election season are signs that our age of inequality has, in a sense, come of age. In very different ways, and with tragically different outcomes, the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump served notice that the status quo is untenable. Both exposed growing divides for what they are: not the natural order of things, but rather the result of how we choose to create and regulate markets, and how we choose to treat those living within them. The toxic rise of Trump, who with stunning success articulated the anger felt by many Americans left behind by a changing economy, cannot be separated from obscene levels of inequality. His victory will likely compound a great tragedy of our time, that growing disaffection with a ruling elite can be weaponized to maim the very thing most able to spread prosperity: the government. But action is the antidote to despair—and as the second half of this book shows, people across the country are working to build egalitarian movements. Change is coming—the question is what kind.

PART ONE

GROWING APART

CHAPTER ONE

Trading Away the Working Class

INTRODUCTION

By Kari Lydersen

On Chicago’s Southeast Side, there sits a huge, mostly empty expanse on the shores of Lake Michigan. The only structures rising amid the tall grass and trees are a small brick former union hall and a pair of crumbling ore walls stretching toward the lake. But this land was once teeming with people and pulsing with sound and light. It was U.S. Steel’s South Works plant, employing 30,000 people at its height and supporting countless families in the once-thriving surrounding neighborhoods.

Today those neighborhoods are depopulated. After hemorrhaging jobs in the 1970s and 1980s, the plant had effectively closed by 1992. Ambitious plans for a sprawling residential and commercial development on the site were canceled in 2016 for lack of investment. For the foreseeable future it will likely remain a forlorn monument to the loss of good-paying unionized manufacturing jobs, and the economic and social devastation that follows. Similar sites exist across the country, in places like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Ohio; and Galesburg, Illinois. The latter two towns are spotlighted in this chapter’s opening and penultimate pieces, respectively.

The sharp decline of the U.S. steel industry was triggered by the appearance of cheaper imports in the 1970s. This dynamic, which had been gutting other manufacturing sectors like apparel and electronics for years, accelerated as markets continued globalizing and politicians failed to erect trade barriers. The country’s auto industry also struggled to compete with imports; Fear and Loathing on the Chrysler Assembly Line shows what a plant closing looked like on the ground. In 1970, manufacturing made up about 25 percent of total U.S. employment; in 2013, it was 8.8 percent.

Of course, the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 didn’t help, as David Moberg notes in Run for the Border. More agreements followed, such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the (unratified as of late 2016) Trans-Pacific Partnership, even as NAFTA’s disastrous impacts became clear. U.S. manufacturers automated plants or just moved operations abroad. Even when plants didn’t move overseas, the threat that they might gave employers the upper hand over unions and workers. Strikes were replaced by concessions. For most laid-off workers, federally-backed Trade Adjustment Assistance and retraining programs were too little, too late, as John Judis explains in Train in Vain.

It is impossible to quantify the economic and social impact on American society of the loss of manufacturing jobs. Far more than union locals have disappeared. So has the idea that an average young person—even one with only a high-school education—can confidently look forward to a stable career that supports a family and funds retirement.

But something deeper and more pernicious has occurred with the country’s industrial decline during the last forty years. The idea that an American is entitled to a clear path to stable, decent-paid work has been gutted. The climate of instability, fear, and transience that has arisen in the wake of the manufacturing crash has meant not only plummeting rates of union membership; it has also eroded the culture of collective struggle, replacing it with individual desperation and competition.

The recent economic crisis shredded the last vestiges of economic stability and opportunity for many families and communities already squeezed by the collapse of the manufacturing economy. It caused more closures and layoffs among the manufacturers still in business, but it also provided convenient cover for employers already planning to slash their workforces or move operations. More than 2 million manufacturing jobs were lost during the recession starting in 2008. During the tail end of President Barack Obama’s first term, there was hopeful talk of reshoring—companies like Nike, Target, and Master Lock bringing jobs back to the United States. Thousands of manufacturing jobs were reportedly reshored in 2014, driven by rising wages and currency values in China and quality concerns about products made there. The movement was also, ironically, bolstered by the increasingly competitive nature of U.S. labor—meaning lower wages and benefits than in years past (in inflation-adjusted dollars), and less need for people altogether due to automation.

In recent years, President Obama, regional leaders, and manufacturing employers have touted high-tech manufacturing as the future, pointing to the promise of 3D printing, clean energy, and flexible hybrid electronics, among others. But it’s doubtful that these hyped sectors can generate positions equal to the number of downwardly mobile former low-tech manufacturing workers.

So can there ever be a real renaissance of manufacturing in the United States, tapping new technology and offering stable, decently paid union jobs? It’s an open question. The aforementioned bright spots pale beside the continued loss of manufacturing jobs due to free trade, automation, and other factors. The country lost a net 5 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2014. Multinational corporations are freer than ever to search abroad for the cheapest wages, a dynamic In These Times highlighted back in 1977 in U.S. Multinationals Make Labor Put on Its Fighting Shoes. When rising Chinese wages cut into profits, companies head to places like Bangladesh. The results can be fatal, as Michelle Chen makes clear in Factory Collapse in Bangladesh Exposes Cracks in the System.

What is clear is that as manufacturing has declined, exacerbating inequality, American workers have grown alienated and angry. Watch the YouTube video of the president of Carrier Corporation informing employees at an Indianapolis plant in February 2016 that they would all lose their jobs because the company was moving operations to Mexico. Amid boos and jeers, one terse response can be heard: Fuck you.

Versions of this scene have occurred in thousands of U.S. factories during the last 20 years; we can expect to see the scene replay again and again. This is why, last year, the issue of trade took on a prominence not seen since the 1992 presidential campaign; it’s a large part of what powered the unexpected success of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The GOP nominee’s anti–free trade stance was laced with xenophobic nationalism—which needn’t be the only alternative to the dominant neoliberal trade regime, as Leon Fink notes in his contribution to this chapter. But whether or not the trade status quo changes, in the years ahead we’re likely to see more politicians appealing to the wounded psyches of millions of Americans left abandoned by a shifting economy to fend for themselves.

Donald Gorobegko is one of those Americans. A fifty-eight-year-old veteran and machinist who once made $45 an hour at union jobs, he now struggles to find temporary work paying $10 an hour. He often spends his days in the Chicago Public Library filling out job applications. Gorobegko is among the many people who live in a makeshift encampment of the dispossessed on the Near South Side of Chicago, between the river and the railroads that once transported manufactured goods across the land.

If we could organize, we could take this country back, Gorobegko said one cold winter day beside his tent. This is supposed to be the greatest country in the world. What happened to that?

YOUNGSTOWN STEEL PLANT DELIBERATELY ABANDONED

By Daniel Marschall (1977)

Youngstown, Ohio—At the heart of the Mahoning River Valley in Ohio lies the Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co., a reddish, pulsating mass of blast furnaces, coke ovens, open hearths, and rolling mills that occupies over one hundred acres along the river.

For factory workers here, producing steel is not just a nine-to-five job, but a source of pride and a way of life that begins at the mill and extends into the neighborhood bar, the corner church, and the local union hall.

Despite warning signs, few expected that it could perish so abruptly.

The fatal announcement came on September 19, 1977—Black Monday—when the Lykes Corp., a shipping/mining/manufacturing conglomerate based in New Orleans, decided to close most of its steelmaking facilities around Youngstown, dumping 5,000 out of 8,500 workers.

The corporation charged that foreign steel imports and environmental controls necessitated the shutdown. But conversations with steelworkers, local political figures, and lower-level union officials reveal that their decision was actually the last step in a series of moves by Lykes that had steadily drained profits and investment from the Youngstown operations to other parts of their business.

The day after the announcement, there was a blood donors drive in Campbell, says Duane Irving, a young grievanceman in United Steel Workers Local 1418. People said they wished Lykes were here now so they could draw blood from them like they took it from us.

Two weeks after the company’s sudden decree, the residents of Campbell and Struthers—the two towns surrounding the mill—were still stunned and discouraged. The term ghost town was used to describe the region’s economic future.

TOTAL HATRED

Shirley Richards had heard it all. A stocky, blond-haired woman, she operates Shirley’s Place, a tiny tavern up the hill from the main entrance of the Campbell Works and across the street from the split-level union hall of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 2163.

She blames both union and management for the problem and resents the callous refusal of the Carter administration to help. People had an inkling something like this was coming, but still thought that it would be years before it all went to hell. Their first reaction was shock, then bewilderment, and then anger. Their attitude towards Lykes: total hatred, she explains.

Mismanagement at the upper echelons of Lykes is primarily responsible, according to Andy Ragan, a first helper in an open-hearth furnace. They just let the place go to hell. They took all the money and put in nothing for improvements.

Middle-aged men like Ragan will be particularly hard hit; they’re too old to readily find another job, too young to qualify for a pension, and usually have a family to support and a home mortgage to pay. He worked in the mill for twenty-nine years, nine months, and twenty-two days and thus may not even be eligible for his thirty-year pension.

Wilford Brown, a twenty-five-year-old black man, had labored there for seven years as an electrician in open-hearth maintenance. Unlike many of his fellow workers, he has been promised a chemical plant job in Headline, Alabama, and is happy at the chance to leave the area. There’s no future here and we all knew it. You could see it coming, he says.

"The first five years, we were working steady. Then we were off all the time and things began to fall apart. In the last few years they’ve cut expenses in every department by scrapping machines and offing people. It was like the difference between night and day.

They drained this place to the extent that everything needs to be worked on. I’ve seen breakdowns where foremen told me to go make the parts myself. They stopped keeping the machines clean—there was oil and grease all over the place. The company just ran it until it fell apart, and now they’re throwing it away. This place is dead—everything but the casket.

The union, in close cooperation with the steel industry, is pushing for higher import quotas. At one press conference, Youngstown’s mayor wondered whether the United States had really won the Second World War, and a local union officer proposed a campaign to encourage local housewives to wear buttons with the slogan: I’m shopping for American products.

Not all officials are satisfied with the union’s current efforts, however. Russell Baxter, president of Local 2163, is infuriated at the lies of company representatives, the inaction of international officers, and the empty rhetoric of the governor and other politicians. Lloyd McBride [USW president] cares no more for 5,000 people than the man in the moon, he declares. Two-thirds of his local will be wiped out by the layoffs.