I was recently in Michigan and visited Flint, where in the early 1990's I had worked for a week training UAW model makers at AC Delco to operate specialized prototyping equipment. The Flint that I saw this week was very different , the facilities where the equipment was installed are currently being demolished, I mean a facility of many, many, acres of production, and Research and Development were being dismantled, the workers already layed off. The "Chevy in the Hole" plant on the river, site of transportation production activity since the late 1800's and a Chevrolet Plant since the early 1900's is a open slab, devoid of any activity at all, that is 130 acres of former transportation production activity, now a "Brownfield Site" . The former "Buick City" facility is also closed, this was a factory complex that produced, drive train, body work, assembled and finished entire lines of GM cars. Dupont had a facility across the street from Buick City when I saw it in the early nineties, that was dedicated to the finishes that were applied there, the paint flowed through pipes that went over the road so that there was no need for packaging. The Nation has lost a huge resource of Industrial capability that took over a century to create.

Plant closures have decimated Flint Michigan. Unemployment is reported to be 12.3% in Flint, population is fleeing with 1998 showing 131,000 residents, and currently less than 125,000. Of that number 26.4% live below the poverty line.

In the sixties GM employed 89,000 workers in Flint, the birthplace of the UAW. The community had flourished with above average opportunities drawing ambitious workers with the promise of good wages and benefits. With the manufacturing boom came all the service businesses, insurance, health care, educational institutions. What will be the basic industry to support these institutions now?

I spoke to Governor Granholm about the current and future state of opportunities in Michigan and she was very clear that the lack of a well thought out trade policy from Washington was the cause of much of the 400,000 lost manufacturing jobs in the last 8 years alone. Our nation's lack of national health care makes our labor unable to compete with the other industrailized nations of the world, who subsidize ALL their businesses by providing national health care. The Governor also pointed out that last month Ontario Canada (which shares the same basic demographics) produced more vehichles than Michigan, for the simple reason that Canada supplies health care to it's workers so the car companies do not have to.

It is easy for Americans who are in areas less devastated by the manufacturing "Dustbowl" to be unconcerned with conditions in Flint, however manufacturing was one of the largest basic creators of wealth that created the middle class in this country. The ripple effect of it's demise will spread like cancer to the other sectors of the economy as more people cannot pay their mortgages, or are left without health care insurance, or no longer are paying into Social Security , or cannot afford to send their children to college. Everyone else in the country should look at the disenfranchised people of Flint and see that not only are these people Americans who are suffering, but that these are the customers for the goods and services provided by YOUR business.