Amy Goldstein - Janesville: An American Story

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Copyright 2017 by Amy Goldstein

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2017

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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Jacket design by Alison Forner

In the Cover Photo, A Resident Waves an American Flag to Honor a GM Worker Leaving the Janesville Assembly Plant on its Final Morning, Dec. 23, 2008.

Jacket photograph by Darren Hauck / Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-5011-0223-3

ISBN 978-1-5011-0228-8 (ebook)

For Cynthia and Robert Goldstein, who taught me to loveand look upwords and have never stopped trying to improve their community

Kristi Beyer 13-year worker at Lear Corp., a factory that makes seats for General Motors

Mike 18-year worker at Lear Corp.; shop chairman for United Auto Workers Local 95

Barb 15-year worker at Lear Corp.

Dave General Motors retiree after 35 years at the Janesville Assembly Plant; vice president of UAW Local 95

Jerad 13-year worker at the assembly plant

Tammy part-time data-entry worker for Home Entry Services

The twins, Alyssa and Kayzia

The younger brother, Noah

Marv General Motors retiree after 40 years at the assembly plant; former UAW-GM Employee Assistance Program representative; member of the Rock County Board of Supervisors

Matt 13-year worker at the assembly plant

Darcy part-time worker setting up Hallmark displays

The girls, Brittany, Brooke, and Bria

Linda Korban 44-year worker at the Parker Pen Company

Sue Olmsted 19-year worker at SSI Technologies, manufacturer of automotive and industrial components

Tim Cullen former and future Democratic state senator; co-chair of the GM Retention Task Force

Paul Ryan Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1st Congressional District of Wisconsin

Ann Forbeck social worker; homeless student liaison for the Janesville School District

Sharon Kennedy vice president of learning at Blackhawk Technical College

Deri Wahlert social studies teacher at Parker High School; creator of the Parker Closet

Diane Hendricks chairman of ABC Supply Co., Inc., in Beloit; co-chair of Rock County 5.0 economic development initiative

Mary Willmer community president of M&I Bank; co-chair of Rock County 5.0

Bob Borremans executive director of the Southwest Wisconsin Workforce Development Board; runs the Rock County Job Center

Stan Milam former Janesville Gazette reporter; host of The Stan Milam Show on WCLO 1230 AM radio

A t 7:07 a.m., the last Tahoe reaches the end of the assembly line. Outside it is still dark, 15 degrees with 33 inches of snownearly a December recordpiled up and drifting as a stinging wind sweeps across the acres of parking lots.

Inside the Janesville Assembly Plant, the lights are blazing, and the crowd is thick. Workers who are about to walk out of the plant into uncertain futures stand alongside pensioned retirees who have walked back in, their chests tight with incredulity and nostalgia. All these GMers have followed the Tahoe as it snakes down the line. They are cheering, hugging, weeping.

The final Tahoe is a beauty. It is a black LTZ, fully loaded with heated seats, aluminum wheels, a nine-speaker Bose audio system, and a sticker price of $57,745 if it were going to be for sale in this economy in which almost no one anymore wants to buy a fancy General Motors SUV.

Five men, including one in a Santa hat, stand in front of the shiny black SUV holding a wide banner, its white spaces crammed with workers signatures. Last Vehicle off the Janesville Assembly Line, the banner says, with the date, December 23, 2008. It is destined for the county historical society.

Television crews from as far away as the Netherlands and Japan have come to film this moment, when the oldest plant of the nations largest automaker turns out its last.

So the closing of the assembly plant, two days before Christmas, is well recorded.

This is the story of what happens next.

Janesville, Wisconsin, lies three fourths of the way from Chicago to Madison along Interstate 90s path across America from coast to coast. It is a county seat of 63,000, built along a bend in the Rock River. And at a spot on the banks where the river narrows sits the assembly plant.

General Motors started turning out Chevrolets in Janesville on Valentines Day of 1923. For eight and a half decades, this factory, like a mighty wizard, ordered the citys rhythms. The radio station synchronized its news broadcasts to the shift change. Grocery prices went up along with GM raises. People timed their trips across town to the daily movements of freight trains hauling in parts and hauling away finished cars, trucks, and SUVs. By the time the plant closed, the United States was in a crushing financial crisis that left a nation strewn with discarded jobs and deteriorated wages. Still, Janesvilles people believed that their future would be like their past, that they could shape their own destiny. They had reason for this faith.

Long before General Motors arrived, Janesville was an industrious little city, surrounded by the productive farmland of southern Wisconsin. It was named for a settler, Henry Janes, and its manufacturing history began early. A few years before the Civil War, the Rock River Iron Works was making agricultural implements in a complex of buildings along South Franklin Street. By 1870, a local business directory listed fifteen Janesville carriage manufacturers. Along the river, a textile industry thrivedwool, then cotton. By 1880, 250 workers, most of them young women, were weaving cloth in the Janesville Cotton Mills.