The Daily - When a G.M. Plant Shut Down in Ohio

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

In 2016, Lordstown, Ohio, helped deliver the presidency to Donald J. Trump, betting that he would fulfill his promise to save its auto industry. Our colleague went there to examine the political fallout from the fact that he didn’t. Guests: Sabrina Tavernise, a national correspondent for The New York Times, met with Brian Milo, who worked at the General Motors plant in Lordstown for a decade; Natalie Kitroeff, a business reporter for The Times, spoke with Sabrina. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: The path to the White House next year runs through places like Lordstown, but many voters there say the G.M. plant shutdown has left them even more at sea politically.For more from Sabrina Tavernise on G.M.’s big tech move and how it’s leaving thousands of workers behind, watch The Times’s new TV show, “The Weekly,” this Sunday night on FX at 10/9c, or Monday on Hulu.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Today. In 2016, Lordstown, Ohio, helped deliver the presidency to Donald Trump, betting that he would fulfill his promise to save the auto industry there. The political fallout from the fact that he didn't. Natalie Kitchel speaks to our colleague, Sabrina Tabernisi. It's Friday, July 5th.

So, Sabrina, tell me why you went to Lordstown, Ohio. So, Lordstown is in the northeast corner of the state. It's in a county called Trumbull. And it is famous principally for one thing. General Motors has bought up the 1,100-acre farm right where Ellsworth Bailey Road crosses the Ohio Turnpike. It has a very, very large car plant that was opened by General Motors in 1966. When we had the groundbreaking ceremony last year that we expected to go up to around 5,000 employees. And of course, now we're in a position... So Lordstown's really defined by this car plant. It's just a tiny little town. It's only got about

4,000 people. But since the 1960s, it's this plant that's been the economic engine of this county, and really the whole area. GM has been building cars in Lordstown for 50 years. The Mahoning Valley takes great pride in being the home of the cruise. For the last several years, the Lordstown plant, it's made this little sedan called the Chevy Cruze. Introducing the all-new Chevrolet Cruze. Best in class fuel efficiency, 10 standard airbags. The plant employed about 5,000 people, building just this one model, the Cruze.

Don't just drive, cruise. And then something happens. Ohio is going to make America great again. The campaign of 2016 starts to heat up. Right over there, Eaton Corp going to Mexico. Right over there, Ford going to Mexico. Ford going to Mexico. Donald Trump is out there talking about manufacturing jobs and how, you know, a lot of people in areas like Ohio have been left behind by an economy made by Democrats. You're losing your jobs. You're losing your income. You're losing your factories. They're going to China. They're going to Mexico. Japan is killing us with the cars.

And after Mr. Trump gets elected president, the day after, literally November 9th, 2016, General Motors is cutting 2,000 hourly workers at two of its plants. GM starts announcing layoffs. One in Lordstown, Ohio, the other one in Grand River in Lansing, Michigan. It announces that the third shift will close. There's an inventory growing for the Chevy Cruze. Why? Because Americans are buying fewer sedans. People aren't buying smaller-sized cars anymore. They're buying SUVs and trucks.

How much will be left in terms of cruise production at that plant? We'll still have two shifts. Last year, they sold about 190,000 cars. For people in Lordstown, this is making them nervous, but they don't actually imagine that the plant would close. They've had this happen before. I think that we're going to be okay in the long run. This is just a road bump, which happens, speed bump, which happens, you know, in the business cycles. But then by April of 2018, there was a second wave of layoffs.

Take a look at shares of General Motors. The company announcing within the last 15 minutes that it is cutting several hundred jobs at its Lordstown, Ohio plant. It is eliminating one of two shifts at that plant. So these layoffs have started. And even as they're going on, Trump is talking about the plant. I said those jobs have left Ohio. They're all coming back. They're all coming back. Coming back. He comes to Lordstown and says,

Hey, you guys out there, don't sell your houses. Don't sell your house. Don't sell your house. Don't move, because these manufacturing jobs, they're coming back. They say the Chevy Cruze is not selling well. Don't move, because these manufacturing jobs, they're coming back. He goes through great political lengths to talk about the plant publicly. So they'll put something else. I have no doubt that in a not-too-distant future, they'll put something else. They better put something else. In a not-too-distant future, they'll put something else. They better put something else.

So the plant limped along for another period of months, and then shortly after Thanksgiving in 2018. General Motors said today it is cutting close to 14,000 jobs, including 15% of its salaried workforce. The company announced that the last jobs would be eliminated. General Motors will stop making six underperforming sedans by the end of next year, idling plants in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, and Ontario, Canada. That's all 5,000 jobs at the plant. The president now threatening to slash government subsidies to GM,

tweeting, very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO Mary Barra for closing plants. The U.S. saves General Motors, and this is the thanks we get. So I saw this news and I thought, huh, this is a major event politically, because this is a place that's unusual. Trumbull County, that's where Lordstown is located, it voted for Donald Trump by a really substantial margin. It was the first time the county had voted for Republicans since 1972. It had been this really true blue union place, real Democratic Party stronghold. So what does that mean, you know? What does it mean that a place that went for Trump substantially, where Trump said specifically, these manufacturing jobs are coming

back. And in the very day after his election, they started going away. There's got to be some political fallout from this. What is the consequence for Trump in this scenario? And I wanted to understand that. I wanted to go report on that. So that's why I went to Lordstown, to talk to people like Brian Milo. Am I alone? Yep. And how old are you guys right now? 36.

He voted for Obama in 2012. And then he voted for Donald Trump in 2016. And then he was laid off. And who's Brian Milo? So Brian is a young guy who's worked at the plant for the better part of 10 years. He and his wife live in a house in a rural part of Northeast Ohio. I got chickens, baby chicks down there now. He has a little daughter, Abby, who he picks up on the school bus after school. Twelve chickens! Twelve chickens!

And what was his job at the GM plant? So Brian did a lot of different things. Oh, gosh, I did so many different things. I did airbags, installed airbags. Venting in the cars. Installed instrument clusters, radios. He's kind of a jack-of-all-trades there at the plant. There's nothing I haven't done on the inside of that car, especially.

And does he like the job? He liked it a lot. You know, for what I was making and the benefits afforded to me, you know, it afforded me this lifestyle, so I appreciate it for it. The thing he liked the most was that he actually earned a wage that really bought him a truly middle-class life. We were working so much overtime because the cruise was selling so great. You wrote your own ticket on overtime. They took vacations. They saved, they renovated the house. I mean, if I wasn't working out there making money, I wouldn't have this property, this home. There's no way I

could have been able to afford that. He's working and thinking that probably this is the rest of his life. I mean, I don't know how it is not to work. This is, it's strange. You know, really it is. I've always worked. What does it feel like right now i don't know weird you know just just weird like it's i feel selfish i guess in a way that i'm not really contributing to society right now in the workforce so after brian's laid off the second shift, the final communication he gets from GM is a letter that says. So it says you must contact your hourly employee office by 3 p.m. on March 12th to accept or decline this job offer. If you do not respond by this deadline, you'll be considered.

If you want, you have a job in Wentzville, Missouri, but it starts in 10 days. you have a job in Wentzville, Missouri, but it starts in 10 days. And if you don't say yes immediately and we don't see you, you don't have a job at General Motors anymore. This isn't even signed by anybody. Yeah, you send 100 of these out, 10 years for a company, and that's what you get. That sounds horrible. He's thinking, OK, I have this house we built. My daughter has this school. My wife works in the healthcare industry here. I don't want to move. And I don't even know if I can.

And I certainly can't in 10 days' time. Now you've got to figure something else out. What's your next plan? Because now all your healthcare, your vision, your dental, all of it's gone. Because I don't want to pick up and go 700 miles. It's not even fair. How is this considered an option?

So he doesn't go. What about your original question about the ramifications of all of this politically for President Trump? So Brian's reaction was, I thought, pretty interesting. Do you feel like he's part of this at all or no? No, no. This is, it kind of annoys me when people think that, you know, he's part of them closing this.

And this is a company decision. You got to put blame where it's due. He said it's about a company and what it's deciding to do. And I'm really angry at this company. Yeah, it's funny. I see all these signs with Trump's face on it about how bad things are here in Lordstown. Well, where's the signs with Mary's face on it? This is this company. Yeah, it's funny. I see all these signs with Trump's face on it about how bad things are here in Lordstown. Well, where's the signs with Mary's face on it? This is her company. Trump don't sign my paycheck. Trump didn't send me this letter. There's nothing on here about

Trump Industries or anything. It says GM, General Motors. That's where the blame lies. I know this reaction very well from my own reporting. People feel like when you ask them about the political ramifications of something like their plant closing, their response is often, you know, you're whittling down my experience of loss to this one thing that's important to you, but that's not necessarily what's important to me.

That's exactly right. That was exactly what he was saying. He was like, look, this is a huge problem for this community. This is a huge issue for my life. And like, all you want to do is come here and like, ask me about Trump. Right. And in fact, when I talked to Dave Green, he's the head of the auto workers union in Lordstown. He really spotted this right away. He was like, oh, reporter lady, New York. Oh, God, you want to ask me about Trump? What, I still like Trump? Do I not like Trump anymore? What is it about Trump? He was hilarious. But I was like, oh, man, oh, he has my number. Yeah. He saw you coming. But did you get him to answer the question?

I think a big piece of it is, you know, elections have consequences. So Dave, you know, he is a Democratic voter and he was a Democratic voter in 2016. And he gets why people voted for Trump. He doesn't like it, but he gets it. People continue to elect politicians that are not going to do the right thing by people. People are going to continue to suffer. But he also was in a lot of ways really frustrated because he started in a country, in a state that had a strong union and where people who were workers understood that it was through that union

and through politics that they get a good deal for themselves and that that's the way it used to be. You know, Walter Ruther, one of the big founders of this organization, right? The ballot box is connected to the bread box. He preached that. And I think people understood that, connected to the bread box. He preached that. And I think people understood that, that the politicians that we elect are going to give people either the opportunity to earn a good living or not. They're going to put money in the pockets of corporate America or the pockets of working America. So you better elect the right people because it's going to have a huge consequence on your livelihood. But, you know, Dave says things have really changed. That's not the case anymore.

And it's really hard to get people to see the connection between politics and their lives. To understand that their votes have consequences. That they can hold politicians accountable. And that if they do, these things they're so sick of in their lives, they could actually change. We'll be right back. Sabrina, what explains that rift for people where they're not feeling a connection between their plant closing and the politicians they put in power?

So I think in order to understand it, you have to go back as early as the 1970s. This is the Campbell, Ohio steel mill of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. This was a big manufacturing area in the 1970s. There were a huge number of steel plants. Many of the steel workers at the Campbell Works are third-generation employees. And a lot of very good-paying jobs. But what started to happen for various reasons, including economic change,

globalization, was that these plants started to close. And there was a very famous closure in September of 1977 in Lordstown. Ladies and gentlemen, the news we've received this morning from Youngstown, Sheet and Tube, is just the worst possible news. About 10,000 people lost their jobs. They have a name for the day disaster struck. They call it Black Monday. Everybody remembers it.

Everybody. Working here for so many years, it's hard to believe that we're put out on the street and don't know what we're going to do. I put in 34 good years and I can be proud of mine for 34 years. That was the saddest moment I ever had when I came home. Where are politicians in all of this? It was very much in those days, the time of the Democratic Party and labor being absolutely hand in hand, glove in glove. So the Democratic politicians would be fighting these closures, and they would really be seen by workers in many ways as the guys who had their back. Carter eventually named a

special task force, which came up with some recommendations to help the steel industry as a whole. The Democratic Party was the party of workers in the United States, and that's who those workers were voting for. But in the 1990s, the U.S. government starts to have negotiations over a trade agreement known as NAFTA with Mexico and Canada to lower trade barriers so that it's easier for companies to do business across those lines. It started by Republicans, but it's really finished in a big, splashy way by the Democratic Party. When I affix my signature to the NAFTA legislation a few moments from now, I do so with this pledge to the men and women of our country who were afraid of these changes. Bill Clinton is the one that signs on the dotted line at the end in the 1990s. And at first, workers I talked to in Lordstown, they didn't really understand the implications of that.

But as the 1990s wore on and then into the early 2000s, things actually started to change. Supply chains started springing up in Mexico. There was a lot of outsourcing that started to change. Supply chains started springing up in Mexico. There was a lot of outsourcing that started to happen. Automation was happening as well. Technology was changing, manufacturing. So many things were going on. And people started to notice that the jobs were disappearing. One worker I talked to, he started in the paint shop in the mid-1990s.

And it started with 38 workers. And when he left the paint shop in the mid-1990s, and it started with 38 workers. And when he left the paint shop in the early 2000s, there were only four. So he described it as this almost kind of invisible hand kind of erasing things behind him as he went. It could be coming for any of us. It's this sort of foreboding. How does that affect the community? Are there other changes that start to happen? So the jobs are real multipliers. And by that, I mean, it's not just the GM job. It's

the suppliers. It's the parts guys. It's the window makers. It's the restaurant nearby that has waitresses and hostesses. So it has a really big effect when these things start happening. And what happens in large parts of Northeast Ohio, and in Ohio more generally, there start to be social problems that come along with this economic decline. Men don't have jobs, or the jobs they have are not paying enough to support a family. And, you know, there's this feeling of worthlessness. There's an increase in drinking, in drugs. The rise of single parenthood really soars. So you have really, in a lot of ways, the breakdown of the family that kind of follows like a wave this economic change. OK, I'm going to ask you the question that Dave, the union leader, made fun of you for, which is what are the political implications of all of that?

Did the Democrats pay a price? Oh, that? Did the Democrats pay a price? Oh, God. Did the Democrats pay a price? So what ends up happening is these workers see that, at first don't immediately understand it because it's all kind of out of focus and confusing, but later realize, oh, my God, that was our own party that basically gave away the farm. Why did they do that? There was this sense of betrayal among workers that actually the Democrats, they weren't that different than the Republicans. So from that point on, that union vote, it becomes a little less reliable for Democrats. And it's not just NAFTA, of course.

Culturally, things are starting to shift. And the Democratic Party, it starts to feel alien to many blue-collar workers. And by the time 2008 comes around, it's getting dicey. They end up going for Obama, but more because he was a change guy than because he was a Democrat. The auto workers were happy. He bailed out GM. But by the end of his second term, their lives hadn't really gotten any better. So by 2016, their heads are basically in this place that's, you know, we'll try anything. And for Trumbull County, that was Donald Trump. I'm like, you know what?

It's a wild card. You know, we need something to shake it up. Our country is a business. He's a businessman. You know, I mean, and I like the fact that, you know, he, he made crazy attempts, like Trump steaks on Trump college. Like it's crazy, right? Like looking back at night, you're like, that's nuts. But I applaud him for it because at least you're willing to put it out there on the line and try it, You know, and if it works, then you're the greatest mastermind to live. And if it fails, well, you know, that was crazy anyway.

Okay, so I guess it sort of makes sense that a guy like Brian is not necessarily going to blame Trump for this plant shutting down because he voted for Trump because he's a wild card. He's not super surprised or necessarily disappointed that this didn't work out because it was a Hail Mary. And what the hell else was he going to do? Yeah, that's exactly right. Do you see Democrats and Republicans as different? No.

In terms of parties? No. It's just politics. It's just a political being. There's no red or blue in it for me. How are you making sense of all of this, this feeling that people like Brian have that the two parties aren't all that different?

I think for someone like Brian, you know, the important thing is that these processes, these have been happening for a long time. And they've been wearing away at the community where he lives for a long time. So these things, they're just much deeper than, you know, the most recent political slogan or the way that, you know, the Republicans or the Democrats are going to message this year. It's about this sort of fundamental bedrock of our lives. It is just has changed. You can't just graduate from high school and go out and get a job and pay your rent. It's not enough money. That feels like a real betrayal for people. It's a set of unmet

expectations that I think is causing real political change. Everything we have is disposable. Everything's made cheap and disposable. And I think that trickles down into our daily lives. I mean, you see marriage success rates are down. You know, things are disposable, even on a human level. I mean, love, I'm an employee. I'm disposable. The old timers, you know, my dad's there, my grandfather's there, they fix things. You know, you had toasters that lasted. You have refrigerators that lasted because people would fix them if something happened. We didn't just throw them away. You have marriages that went that lasted because people would fix them if something happened. We didn't just throw them away. You have marriages that went 70 years

because people would fix them if they were broken. You know, you have people that would, people who have went on strike and have died on picket lines for their companies. You know, am I willing to lay my life on the line for the company that is willing to send

me a piece of paper and tell me what to do with my life? No concern for my family or situation? I just think it's all broken. how am I going to make a livelihood in the future when the entire foundation of how I thought this was going to go, I can no longer count on that. The rug has been pulled out from under me. I don't really want to talk about politics. Exactly. What would you hope would be different? If it were me, I would hope that big companies would cease to exist because once you

get so big you forget where you came from and the little guys who make it possible for you to have your giant company and your million dollar salaries they're just a number to you they're replaceable and we were reminded that in the plant all the time. If you didn't like what was going on, quit. There's a thousand people that would take this job tomorrow. On the other hand, I have to ask whether people like Brian, whether the people you spoke to are hearing the candidates this time around, the 2020 candidates who are speaking directly to some of the issues

that he cares so much about, are they being heard? So the short answer is, at this point, not yet. But it is a really interesting political time, because for the first time in a really long time, a lot of the candidates on the left are questioning some of these basic things. I mean, the functioning of American capitalism, that is kind of, you know, a topic of conversation. You can have all of the growth that you want, and it doesn't mean anything if all of the new income and wealth is going to the top 1%. Who is this economy really working for? It's doing great for giant drug companies.

It's just not doing great for people who are trying to get a prescription filled. When capitalism comes into tension with democracy, which is more important to you? I believe democracy is more important. So I feel very strongly about the need to check the corporate consolidation and let the free market work. It is interesting, right? Brian is in this group of voters. The Democrats know they need to win the election. He is really coveted.

These people want to win him over. That's right. But he's also really skeptical. And he's really sick of the political class in the United States. And he's been burned by both sides at this point. He doesn't trust any political leader to help him. And the consequence is a political system that's still disconnected and pretty unaccountable to people like Brian.

You know, I think Brian's going to vote. He's patriotic, and he feels a sense of civic duty. But whether he puts any faith in the person he chooses, that's another question. They're going to have to work really hard to convince him that he should. Sabrina, thank you so much. You're welcome, Natalie. The fate of the Lordstown GM plant and its workers is the subject of Sunday night's episode of The Weekly,

a new TV show from The New York Times on FX and Hulu. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. It's an earthquake and the chandelier is moving. This is the longest one ever. On Thursday, a major earthquake struck Southern California, starting in a relatively secluded area of the Mojave Desert and shaking structures up to 150 miles away.

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