By ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter
Laura Lee McDermeit is trying to look at the bright side — but it’s difficult. After 20 years at Haldex Brake Corporation, she’s unsure what the future holds.
“I’ll just see where God can take me,” she said.
Once Haldex closes its doors for sure, that is.
Until then, she, like most other Haldex employees, is working overtime.
“The machine shop is running seven days a week” trying to build up inventory for the imminent move of the company’s production lines from Iola to Monterrey, Mexico, she noted.
When the first of the 40 to 50 lines do move, sometime in early October, McDermeit intends to go along for the ride.
“When they asked for volunteers to help set up the lines in Monterrey, I said, ‘I’ll do it,’” McDermeit explained. “I saw it as an opportunity.”
McDermeit, along with seven other line workers, two engineers and four supervisors, will make up two teams that rotate into Mexico to set up production lines and help train new workers in their use.
“A lot of people are bitter, but it’s not Mexico’s fault,” she said of the Sweden-owned company’s decision to move.
Instead, McDermeit blames the shift in American factory work south of the border squarely on Washington.
“It’s our government that did it,” she said.
“Ever since the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed, the jobs have been moving south.”
McDermeit noted that the closure of Haldex will impact not only the factory’s 160 workers, but all of Iola.
“There’s three or four couples there that both incomes are now gone. A lot of people had bought new vehicles.”
McDermeit pondered how those families will now make car payments. How they will pay their mortgages.
“Sure, we can go on unemployment, but where’s the insurance? That’s gone.”
Benefits at Haldex, she said, were very good.
“That’s why we worked there,” she said, “that plus the five weeks of vacation.”
Now, she said, “I’ve been going online trying to find insurance. How am I going to purchase food on a fixed unemployment income?”
And, she added, closing the company means another food source is gone as well.
“We’ve lost Angel Food, too. Haldex was their distribution point.”
The low-cost food boxes were shipped monthly on a large tractor trailer, and a loading dock is required to unload the produce and meats. Haldex also let the charity utilize an air-conditioned space for sorting the orders.
McDermeit was also a regular Angel Food customer.
Still, she admits, she has it better than some.
“My house is paid off. My car is paid off.”
Before her husband, Doug, died of cancer 10 years ago, McDermeit said, “he made sure we had the house and the cars paid off.”
Plus, she said, all employees will all get a severance package that includes a set number of weeks of insurance, based on the number of years an employee has been with Haldex.
In addition, she said, employees are eligible for a government program — the NAFTA Transitional Adjustment Assistance Program — that pays for them to return to school to be retrained for other careers.
“I know a lot of the engineers are going back to get more education and then they’ll probably move on,” she said.
While she’s trying to teach herself computer skills, McDermeit does not intend to join her coworkers in shifting to student life at Allen County Community College.
What she would like to do is find another job.
“But in Iola, we’re limited. There’s not a lot of options here. You’ve got Herff Jones, Russell Stover and Gates.” And most Haldex workers, used to an air-conditioned environment, will not make the switch to Gates, which doesn’t have that amenity, she said. “I couldn’t work there.”
Also, she added, Gates has too great a staff turnover. Haldex, she noted, had people who came and stayed. “A lot of the people have been there since high school,” she said.
SO, UNTIL she finds that next place — at 59 she’s too young to retire — McDermeit intends to accept unemployment insurance — “at least until the end of the year.”
One thing she will not do is leave Iola.
“I’ve been here too long. This is where my husband an I moved to raise our kids.”
The McDermeits came to Iola from Denver in 1978. Doug’s family was from this area, she said, and he wanted to raise his family in a quieter place.
McDermeit believes Iola’s leaders need to be more visionary about the city’s future.
“If we had an indoor pool, kids could swim all year round. It would have made jobs all year round. It would give the elderly someplace to walk.”
Iola’s mayor “Bill Maness is really working on” trying to get another industry to move to Allen County, but “he’s lost his job, too,” she noted.
And, she said, local business promoters “Iola Industries can’t do anything about the building — it’s Sweden’s building.”
Unless other options emerge, she feared, workers like her will be forced to leave.
As a community, she said, “You don’t want to lose these people who have lived here all their lives and know people. A lot of these elderly depend on Iola.”
9/10/10
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