A town in danger of dying out as GM falters
ANDERSON,Indiana: Starkest example of the damage that plant closings can do
ANDERSON,Indiana,USA -The New York Times, by Jeremy W. Peters & Micheline Maynard/International Herald Tribune -21 Feb 2006: -- General Motors once had so many plants here that it had to stagger their schedules so that the streets would not be clogged with traffic when the workday ended. At the city's peak, 35 years ago, one of every three people in Anderson worked for GM... Now there is not a single GM plant left; just two parts plants that GM once owned still survive. Anderson, which had 70,000 people in 1970, now has fewer than 58,000... A visit to Anderson, now a stripped-down shell of its former self, provides perhaps the starkest example of the damage that plant closings can do. Reminders of the once-mighty auto industry are everywhere - abandoned plants, a ghostly downtown and residents who speak with bewilderment and frustration about what has happened to the auto business... But in many ways, Anderson is still just as dependent on GM as it once was. Only now, rather than being dependent on General Motors, the corporation, it is dependent on General Motors, the welfare state... And Anderson can never hope to find anything as big, or as generous, as GM to provide its economic backbone...
posted by Unknown @ 8:13 PM
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