New ghost towns: Industrial communities teeter on the edge

[Liberal_in_LA]

New ghost towns: Industrial communities teeter on the edge

By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

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Ravenswood, with 4,000 people and one big factory, is like many towns in the USA where things still are made: caught in a winter between recession and recovery, hoping the latter will arrive before the former kills the last decent blue-collar job.

If the rest of the aluminum works closed, "would this become a ghost town?" muses Jim Frazier, principal of the Henry J. Kaiser Elementary School.

Whether it's textiles in the Carolinas, paper in New England or steel in the Midwest, most industrial cities and mill towns "are on pins and needles," says Donald Schunk, an economist at Coastal Carolina University. "Day to day, week to week, any manufacturing facility seems vulnerable. People don't know if they'll be there."

That's true in:

• Georgetown, S.C. (pop. 9,000), where the closing of the local steel mill last year left International Paper as the last major private employer.

• Madawaska, Maine (pop. 4,000), where workers voted last month to take an 8.5% wage cut to keep the financially strapped paper mill going.

• Glenwood, Wash. (pop. 500), where flat lumber prices and rising land prices are crippling the forest products industry.

Anxiety over possible layoffs or closings can disturb workers as much as the real thing, experts say. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert says it's uncertainty that really bothers people: They feel worse when they think something bad might happen than they do when they know it will happen.

Ravenswood knows the feeling. It's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-01-townhangingon_N.htm

[RKP5637]

1. The backbone of America is breaking and the alternatives are slim. And the ramifications

of this will effect all almost all citizens. It is contagious and a domino effect. We have been watching similar go on in hi-tech now at the employee level for years. Jobs outsourced to the cheapest bidding country and not just manufacturing, but at all levels. There are many quite competent engineers in other countries that will work for far less too. And all labor is cheap.

[sam sarrha]

2. THAT'S WHY THERE IS A TRADE DEFICET..DAMN IT.. WAKE THE HELL UP.!! WE NEED JOBS.!!

[HeresyLives]

3. One industry towns have always run this risk.

They just never believed it would happen.