N.C. Job Losses Spur Anger, Fear in Textile Belt
The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC)
September 28, 2003

WILKESBORO --Tammy Johnson watched her job hauled out the door at Ansell Golden Needles, one of a dozen textile factories to shut down in Wilkes County in the past three years.

Johnson, 34, made work gloves until February 2002. But before she left, she wrapped her machine in plastic. She helped crate it for shipment to Mexico. She even helped make training videos and write manuals for the people who would replace her.

The ordeal made Johnson very angry -- not at her employer, but at the elected leaders she believes pushed her job out of the country.

"Our president promised that he would bring new jobs to the states affected by NAFTA," Johnson said. "We have yet to get any attention in our area."

For three years, the bad news has rolled as unstoppably as a freight train across North Carolina's Piedmont.

A recession has swept the entire state, including the Triangle. But fear about the future and anger at politicians is particularly pronounced in the heavily Republican manufacturing spine running through the middle of the state, where dozens of textile mills and furniture factories have shut their doors, where jobs making cigarettes and fiber-optics have vanished by the thousand.

Now, once-safe Republicans are worried that this wrath could hurt their ticket next year from President Bush on down.

Voters are "scared to death," said U.S. Rep. Richard Burr of Winston-Salem, who is seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate next year. He believes the White House and Congress must pay more attention to job losses in North Carolina.

In Burr's hometown, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. announced this month it will eliminate 2,600 jobs, 40 percent of its work force.

A statewide poll for The News & Observer this month found that the economy and jobs are by far the most important issues facing the state and nation. Concern has risen as the recovery has stalled.

North Carolina's 6.5 percent unemployment rate -- which was 3.8 percent three years ago -- is now the ninth-highest in the country. In August, the state's work force declined by 23,034, a figure exceeded only in Michigan. In three years, jobs have declined by 141,890, according to the Employment Security Commission.

Only 39 percent of those polled say that the state's elected leaders are doing enough to improve the economy. Only 41 percent say that Bush has done enough to protect furniture, textiles and other manufacturing industries from foreign trade.

Critics blame free-trade deals, starting with the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, for giving manufacturing jobs to lower-paid foreign workers. But many experts say that on balance, freer trade helps the economy .

"When textiles started going bad, nobody did anything," said Lester Adkins Jr., 46, a 25-year veteran of Carolina Mills in Catawba County whose plant is closing this week . Adkins, a foreman, accepted a $ 2-an-hour pay cut to take a job at another plant. "People keep saying they're going to do something about it," he said, "but I been hearing that since Reagan was in there."

An alarm goes off

Republican Rep. Sue Myrick of Charlotte is choosing far stronger words than her colleagues.

Last month, Myrick charged that Bush, a close political ally, was "out of touch" on the trade issues. Myrick represents the 9th District, including the former textile powerhouse of Gaston County.

"If he doesn't care about us, we won't care about him come election time," Myrick told the Gaston Chamber of Commerce, her words striking like an alarm bell.

Several GOP congressmen cheered her on, saying she expressed the views of many textile-belt Republicans.

"We were doing all the right things and having all the right meetings and nothing was happening," she said in an interview. "I came to the end of my rope. It's sort of like in your family. When you have a problem, sometimes you need tough love."

It was the demise of Pillowtex that heightened awareness of the problem. The Cabarrus County textile company closed in August, throwing about 5,000 North Carolinians out of work.

Pillowtex's closing was particularly poignant -- and potentially damaging -- to Republican Rep. Robin Hayes of Concord, who represents the 8th District.

His family created the textile giant 116 years ago. But Hayes cast the deciding ballot in a 215-214 House vote in 2001 for giving Bush broader authority to sign trade agreements.

Torn between his president and the workers back home, Hayes broke down in tears after the vote.

And he has paid a political price ever since. When Hayes walked into a Kannapolis auditorium last month to meet with former Pillowtex workers, one reportedly shouted: "Thanks for sending the jobs overseas, Robin."

In his third term in a district that could swing to either party, Hayes has reason for concern. But he and other Republican lawmakers say they see the administration becoming more responsive. The president recently agreed to appoint a new assistant commerce secretary for manufacturing. He plans to put
new pressure on China to devalue the yuan, which would raise the price of Chinese imports and make U.S. goods more competitive. And he has promised to increase penalties for illegal trade shipments.

Fierce discontent

Nowhere is the anger greater than in the 10th Congressional district, the most blue-collar district in the nation, according to The Almanac of American Politics.

The heart of the district is the Hickory metropolitan area, which was humming with producers of textiles, furniture and fiber optics just three years ago.

The combination of loosened trade restrictions, competition for cheap labor and the recession has cost the region 25,062 jobs in three years. In August, the area's unemployment rate was 9 percent, up from a low of 1.8 percent in 2000.

The closings haven't stopped. This week , Maiden-based Carolina Mills will shutter a yarn-spinning factory in Newton, laying off 65.

The company's chairman, George Moretz, says he feels helpless against foreign competition. That's one reason Moretz is thinking about challenging nine-term Republican Cass Ballenger, the congressman from Hickory whose political troubles result directly from his support of trade agreements. Last year Ballenger beat back his strongest opposition since he was first elected in 1986.

The anger comes from executives and mill workers, from Republicans and Democrats.

"Not a damn soul is paying any attention in Raleigh or Washington," said Andy Wells, 49, a Hickory commercial real estate broker and conservative Republican.

"[Gov. Mike] Easley goes to Cabarrus but doesn't set foot here," Wells said. "We don't hear from Cass Ballenger. [U.S. Sen. John] Edwards doesn't know we exist. I haven't seen a lot of [U.S. Sen. Elizabeth] Dole up here."

Even Ballenger was taken aback by his constituents' anger at last month's Soldiers' Reunion parade in nearby Newton, which he has attended for 30 years. Ballenger blames some of his woes on the attention given to Pillowtex.

"We have lost more jobs than Pillowtex," he said. "But Oprah Winfrey didn't pay any attention to us."

Wells, a former 10th District GOP chairman, said the area has been ignored because Republicans take it for granted and Democrats write it off. He said voters may now be more open to other options -- a Republican challenger or a Democrat.

"It is a question of which candidate will make the case that their policies are going to do something for this specific area," he said.

Lasting anger?

Voters' anger is not lost on Democrats. Although former President Clinton, a Democrat, helped push through NAFTA, Democrats now hope to associate the Bush administration and other Republicans with the most recent trade agreements and job losses. It was no coincidence that Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat, made his formal presidential announcement this month in
front of a closed textile mill in Robbins where his father once worked.

And Easley, also a Democrat, assails the trade policies coming out of Washington, particularly what he believes is weak enforcement of trade laws.

Still, Republicans are not accepting all the economic blame. At a GOP gubernatorial forum last week in Charlotte, candidates accused Easley of not cultivating a friendly business climate. They called for tax cuts for business.

Bush, who easily carried North Carolina in 2000 with 56 percent of the vote, remains popular here, according to The N&O's poll. But the president's approval rating has fallen from 67 percent in January to 56 percent this month.

Voters' most difficult choice could come in next year's Senate race. If the contest pits Erskine Bowles, Clinton's chief of staff, against Burr, the congressman, their past support for trade agreements could neutralize each other.

But the biggest questions are whether the economy will improve by November 2004, and whether jobs, or the war on terrorism, will be foremost in voters' minds.

For Sarah Johnson, 56, of Lincoln County , about to lose her job at Carolina Mills in Newton after 29 years, it's hard to imagine that anything will loom larger than her community's economic woes.

"This has been going on for so long and they just seem to be turning their heads," she said. "I don't care if they're Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever. Their policies are costing us our jobs."