…of Nikitas3.com

(First of Two Parts)

In the 1970s, as America waded through stagflation and Jimmy Carter malaise, Massachusetts suffered as well. A center of Colonial and American economic power and progress for three centuries, The Bay State found itself in an area of the nation that rapidly was losing economic clout to the Sun Belt. But in Ronald Reagan’s economic boom of the 1980s, Massachusetts experienced an economic resurgence by dint of national prosperity, and when he ran for President in 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis touted the ‘Massachusetts Miracle’ in asking for voter approval.

And as we all know, Dukakis lost, and ‘the miracle’ was exposed as being but a plug in the Titanic’s hull.

Since then, as the American economy has moved more definitively to hospitable low-tax, low-regulation and pro-growth and pro-Republican Southern and Western climes, Massachusetts has been losing not only economic power but people as well, showing more marked population loss since the 1990s than any other state in the union. And while there still is prosperity around the state capital in Boston, and while many older residents have pensions to live off of, the overall picture is flat to grim, while the Republican party’s presence in this state too has dwindled as self-starting conservatives saw the handwriting on the anti-business Democrat wall.

Meanwhile the poorer, older and weaker population left behind today is lorded over by an ever stronger and more leftist Democrat party. Now controlling 85% of the state legislature, the Dems simply have free reign to divide up the dwindling economic pie amongst themselves – politicians, environmentalists, public universities, government employees — with little left over for those unable to leave.

Here in the very western end of Massachusetts is isolated and rural Berkshire County. It is a place that once was home to 14,000 General Electric jobs in Pittsfield, and many smaller manufacturing operations that had established themselves throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. But times have turned very, very tough. After 70 years of operation in which belligerent and demanding unions executed 10 major strikes against GE, along with wildcat strikes, walkouts, slowdowns and in-your-face confrontations with management, tough-as-nails CEO Jack Welch, who lived in Pittsfield in the 1960s, decided that, along with natural economic forces and Massachusetts’ increasingly hostile business climate, that enough was enough with Pittsfield and its unions. He shut down most of Pittsfield’s operations in the 1980s, leaving only 3,000 jobs in GE Plastics, which now is Sabic, a Saudi corporation.

All is not lost however. Berkshire County is unlike many rural parts of America, and has much cachet among wealthy New Yorkers as a rural getaway, and is sprinkled with million-dollar homes; it has a vibrant and world-renowned cultural scene in summer (Tanglewood, Jacob’s Pillow, Clark Art Institute, etc.) that attracts a sophisticated and upscale crowd with much disposable income; it has prosperous, non-union Crane Paper in Dalton that makes fine writing paper along with all of America’s currency paper. Crane is rock-solid and treats its workers very well; and there is Tony Williamstown in the northern part of Berkshire, with wealthy Williams College as its economic base.

Still, many Berkshirites are simply packing up and leaving while at the same time Massachusetts’ Democrat-dominated legislature, continuing a long tradition of imposing heavy taxes, regulation and mandates on private enterprise, killed 14 small-business-friendly bills in 2005 alone.

Meanwhile no-growth activism and extremist environmentalism are so strident in Massachusetts, and particularly in Berkshire, that the very thought of a new mine, quarry, housing subdivision, generating plant, hotel or timber harvest is met with gasps of incredulity. And Berkshire’s ultra-left US Congressman John Olver bragged in his 2006 environmental newsletter about a whopping $40 million in federal funds that he earmarked not for district economic growth but to empower anti-growth ‘green’ groups, to finance nature preserves and manage ‘heritage forests’, and to fund eco-studies programs at the increasingly radical University of Massachusetts.

2007 has been a bad year for manufacturing jobs here in Berkshire, population 140,000. Three paper mills have shut down eliminating another 375 high-paying jobs that brought good money into the county. These were not seasonal jobs serving the tourists, but genuine year-round factory toil. And with these three closings, there has been a sense of finality about Berkshire’s future. And a look into the circumstances explainsa lot, and why we must be concerned about further Democrat/socialist/environmentalist encroachment on our productive states in the South and West.

The latest Berkshire mill to announce closing is Schweitzer-Mauduit in the town of Lee, population 5,000. A maker primarily of cigarette paper and some other products, Schweitzer’s plant had been in Berkshire for almost 200 years, the last vestige of an era when paper manufacturing was concentrated in the Northeast. But with globalization, and, in Schweitzer’s case, a steep drop in the market for cigarettes, the mill had been losing money since 2000, and workers have been aware for a long time that the end was near.

A wrap-up article about the plant closing in the local Berkshire Eagle newspaper offered many clues as to the state of the economy in a liberal/leftist bastion like Massachusetts. “For 37 years, the soundtrack of Robert Zerbato’s life has been the din of machines turning our cigarette paper…” the Eagle reports. “Here within the weathered brick walls… Zerbato has earned a better-than average wage.”

Later the article states that Zerbato, age 55, a team leader supervising machine operations, had planned to spend the next seven years until his retirement between his home in Lee and “trips to his place in Florida.”
In another article, it states that a unionized machine operator at Schweitzer was making an average $65,000 to $70,000 including overtime. And it always is important to remember that unions obtain for their members the most generous benefit, bonus and pension packages, so salary is just a start.

But these two notes — about Zerbato’s home in Florida, and the union pay scale — which a casual reader might interpret as a deserved lifestyle for workers, really indicate what effect artificially high union wages and benefits, along with confrontation tactics, are having on American workers and their communities, particularly in places where marginal companies are struggling to compete.

“>Click here to read Part 2