Home 
Opinion Editorials Sad to see longtime employer Fleetwood close
Sad to see longtime employer Fleetwood close
|
Amid all the talk of economic stimulus and pending recovery from the
recession, Union County looks to be drowning. The manufacturing sector
is awash in job losses. A monster tidal wave hit last week, when Fleetwood Enterprises announced the permanent closure of its La Grande travel trailer plant. It’s bad enough that 150 family-wage jobs were swept away in the flood. It’s worse that the losses will likely push the local unemployment rate above 15 percent for March. And it’s terrible that this recession is so deep, so severe, it spelled finis for a local business enterprise everyone thought would be around forever. There are plenty of people living around here today who can’t remember a time when there was no Fleetwood. The plant at the corner of Pierce Road and Highway 82 near Island City built travel trailers for some 40 years. And what a heyday it had. Back in the mid- to late-1990s, Fleetwood employed 300 people and worked around the clock to meet the demand for the product. Who would have thought it would ever go under? It would have been very difficult back then to envision a silent plant, a deserted parking lot, the empty yards out back where row upon row of completed trailers were stored for shipping. Last summer, many people assumed that $4-a-gallon gasoline was the major reason people were no longer buying recreational vehicles. The more naive among us figured that people would go back to buying RVs as soon as the price of fuel dropped. But as we now know, high gas prices were just the tip of the iceberg. The credit crisis was the real killer. Fleetwood struggled gamely to hang on, but in the end had to give it up. No one can blame the company for packing it in when there was no longer a chance to realize a profit. The Fleetwood plant is closed due to circumstances beyond local control. But that’s little comfort to the workers, many of whom gave the best years of their lives to the company. And it’s no comfort at all to the families of those workers, spouses and children, whose futures are suddenly so uncertain. Perhaps the economy will start to turn around this year, as the more optimistic of the prognosticators say. Maybe, economic stimulus money will create jobs to replace those lost not only at Fleetwood, but at Northwood Manufacturing, Boise Cascade and Baretto Manufacturing. Maybe people will start earning and spending again, and things will return to normal. Perhaps, over time, the memory of this Great Recession will fade. But Union County will feel the pain of the Fleetwood closure for years to come. This one is going to leave a scar. |
