Chrysler Fenton workers: Laid off and ticked off
FENTON – Emotions ranged from anger to sadness Friday as more than 1,000 people protested the closure of the Chrysler local assembly plants and the general loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Organizers held the rally on the front lawn of the Chrysler plants in Fenton that once employed as many as 6,000 people. The last Dodge Ram pickup built at the north plant rolled off the assembly line July 2, eight months after the adjacent south plant produced its final minivan. Chrysler plans to sell off the shuttered plants.
The north plant closure stung local workers even more because Chrysler received a multibillion-dollar bailout package from the U.S. government.
Politicians "must get it through their damn heads that they are destroying the American way of life," said Don Ackermann, president of United Auto Workers Union local 136, the union that represents employees at the north plant.
Chrysler continues to build minivans at a plant in Windsor, Ontario, while it consolidated Ram pickup production to assembly plants in Warren, Mich., and Saltillo, Mexico.
As part of the rally, attendees marched onto the overpass just east of the plant that crosses Interstate 44. Traffic slowed for several minutes as drivers observed the mass of people on the overpass, which was temporarily closed to traffic. Organizers obtained a permit for the closure.
There were at least a handful of workers who were too emotional about losing their jobs to show up, said Vet Goods, an electrician from University City. Goods said she has been a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for 26 years and has been called in to help update the plant several times paydayloans.
"It hurts them to even come out here," she said of friends who worked at the plant. "They gave blood, sweat and tears for 20 and 30 years. They don’t even want to come past here because there’s a spiritual and emotional connection with what they gave to produce this product."
With Chrysler uninterested in keeping the Fenton plants open, local politicians are now focusing on how to use the site for other manufacturing businesses.
Mark Horne is a Chrysler worker ready to start a new chapter in his life.
Horne was a toolmaker at the north plant until he was laid off and in January accepted a buyout. He wrote letters to U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and other politicians appealing to save jobs at the plant before he decided to use federal money to pursue an associate’s degree in computer-aided drafting and engineering.
Still, Horn showed up at the rally, hoping that Friday’s demonstration will pressure politicians to find a way to create jobs at the Fenton site.
"I wrote a letter … but unless you do it en masse, I don’t really think it makes much difference," Horne said. "I think, in the end, there will be something back in these plants."