Worries mount in wake of layoffs

By Don Shilling

Village residents are alarmed by the cuts and their potential impact.

LORDSTOWN — The escalating layoffs at the General Motors plant have plenty of people worried.

Children fret about their parents losing their homes. Community residents are concerned that unsold real estate is dragging down their property values. Business owners hope they can survive until autoworkers are recalled.

“Everybody is talking about it. It doesn’t matter whether your from Lordstown or not,” said Carol Senne, special education coordinator at the Trumbull County Career and Technical Center.

The people of Lordstown, however, are taking a direct hit as GM slashes its Lordstown hourly staff from 4,200 to 1,400. With demand for cars down drastically, the complex has been shut down for all of January and will be operating with one shift, instead of three, as of Feb. 9.

Senne said she has three homes for sale on her street in Lordstown, which is the first time in 26 years that so many homes have been for sale at once.

She cringes when she thinks about the declining value of her home.

“It seems like everybody is conserving and tightening their belts, which makes everyone scared,” she said.

She was having lunch Tuesday with Betty Ricer, work study coordinator for the Trumbull County Board of Education.

Children in Lordstown and surrounding communities are worried, especially if their parents are being laid off, Ricer said.

“This has put a lot of stress on them,” she said. “They are afraid they are going to lose their homes and have to move.”

Ricer has been talking with high school students about their career options, making sure they know that chances are slim that they can walk into a good-paying industrial job without any training.

Ricer and Senne were having lunch at A&J’s Country Cafe, where owner Terry Golden is concerned about how the mounting GM layoffs will affect her business.

“It’s definitely going to hurt,” she said.

She bought the restaurant in 2006 just before GM canceled the midnight shift in Lordstown. When that shift was restored last August, workers from the midnight turn stopped in after work for breakfast. Not only is Golden losing those customers, but she also will lose the afternoon shift workers who came in before work for lunch.

GM announced Monday that the afternoon shift will be cut.

Lordstown businesses aren’t the only ones feeling the effects of the downturn in car sales.

“It’s squeezing everyone in the Valley,” said Craig Bonar, who also was having lunch at Golden’s restaurant.

He and his son, Todd, operate Rush Trucking in Warren Township, which has cut its number of drivers from 15 to eight in the past two years. The reduction has come from not replacing drivers who leave.

Craig Bonar said drivers are out there looking for work, but he doesn’t have enough business to hire them.

His company primarily hauls steel, including taking loads from local steel processors to the Honda car plant in Marysville, Ohio. Those orders are down by two-thirds recently, he said.

The steel business also is slow. WCI Steel in Warren has temporarily stopped making steel, and smaller processors have not brought workers back from the Christmas holidays, he said.

To make matters worse, haulers that normally deal with auto-related business are bidding on steel jobs because the auto business has dried up, he said.

There was a sign of hope in the small diner, however.

Eight men from Michigan were having lunch. They work for contractors who are working inside the Lordstown complex, getting it ready for the launch of the Chevrolet Cruze in April 2010. GM has said it will spend $370 million to prepare the plant for its next small car.

One of the contractors, who didn’t want to be named, said his company was concerned GM would cancel the Cruze because of its financial problems that have led to government loans. That hasn’t happened, however, which is good news for Lordstown, he said.

“It shows that GM really needs this car. They are moving forward,” he said.

shilling@vindy.com