Photo by Ashley L. Conti, Bangor Daily News
Stories like this make me so sad. When a plant closes, the ripple effects in a community are devastating. If only we had some kind of sane trade policy that prevented foreign nations from putting places like this out of business:
BUCKSPORT, Maine — Some came out with grim faces while others smiled and stopped to shake hands and chat with friends about days gone by.
But all millworkers who filed out of the Verso Paper mill Wednesday got applause from a crowd of more than 100 people who gathered at the main gate to mark the final shift at the 84-year-old papermaking facility.
“It’s pretty down,” millworker Travis French, 36, of Ellsworth said of the mood in the mill that day as he stood across the street. He held his toddler daughter, Harper, in his arms as he walked away from his last shift at the mill, where he has worked since 2009.
“It’s the end of an era,” he added. “Everyone is losing their jobs.”
French said he is not sure what he will do next for work.
“I’ve got some applications out,” he said, but he hadn’t had any responses yet. “It will be hard for a little while, but I guess life will go on.”
Many workers declined interviews with members of the media as they filed out through the throng, walking along a marked crosswalk that connects the mill’s main gate to a parking lot across the street. A line of well-wishers stood on either side of the crosswalk, shaking hands with workers and thanking them as they filed past.
Bucksport resident Bill Dulong, a mill employee for 37 years, said he had mixed emotions about his final day at work.
“I was ready to retire anyway, but not like this,” Dulong said with a lunch basket hanging from the crook of his left arm as he spoke. “It’s a sad ending to something that was really great.”
Wednesday marked the final shift for the vast majority of 570 workers at the mill. Verso announced Oct. 1 it was shutting down by the end of the year. Earlier this month, Verso agreed to sell the mill to AIM Development next month for approximately $60 million.
AIM Development, a subsidiary of Montreal-based American Iron & Metal, is not expected to resume papermaking operations at the mill, which first began operations in 1930. AIM has not said what its plans are, but the scrap metal firm is expected to dismantle the mill and seek to redevelop the 250-acre waterfront property, similar to what it is doing with another former Verso mill in Sartell, Minnesota.
Dulong said the permanent loss of the property’s manufacturing capability would not be good for Bucksport.
“We’d like to see it going,” Dulong said of the mill. “Just to junk it — that’s not the way we wanted to go out.”
Chalk another one up for the job creators.
We did have a reasonably good trade policy until Clinton signed NAFTA into law. We also had a pretty good banking system in place until Clinton allowed the Glass-Steagall Act to be repealed. Blame Bush for the economic collapse of 2007-2008 if you’d like, but it was Bill Clinton who set the stage for that collapse and the destruction of our manufacturing sector.