Our Little Town

I live in Kingsport, Tennessee. It is on the edge of dying.

Of the communities in our area, it is led politically by people with a startling lack of vision and a resolute inability to provide anything of interest to progressive, farsighted businesses. People here don't just resist change; they belive that change is the work of Satan.

Gets so you'd love to hear some good news. I heard some just yesterday! Yesterday I heard from the ONLY business in Kingsport reporting a banner year and near-record profits.

Our Rotary club was addressed by an executive from BAE systems, which is a British company that operates Holston Army Ammunition Plant. We're not supposed to talk about it, but they make C5 explosives, among other things. One of the speaker's PowerPoint charts showed that the tonnage of explosives had been projected to be less than one this past year but, due to Iraq and Afghanistan, it exceeded ten tons. It caused the parent company to scramble to upgrade the physical plant and actually hire some staff (after having laid off many; the headcount is now only about 15% less then when they took over).

So war has been good to us. If it were not for war, we would not have even this little bit of good news....

o Kingsport Press was taken over by a Canadian company, its assets reduced, employees laid off, and operations virtually shut down.

o Willamette Paper took over a local paper mill and, to their credit, recapitalized a badly faded plant and are doing well - after a round of layoffs.

o The largest employer in town, Eastman Chemical, recently sold off an operating division [located elsewhere] and posted record profits. So, I'm waiting for them to take all that profit and rehabilitate and revitalize its decaying physical plant. I know they will; I know they won't open operations in Mexico or China or India and shut down the local operation which once provided work for 25,000 and now sustains 11,000 [CORRECTION: 7,500] of my neighbors. They won't do that, even if it means increased long-term profitability due to incredibly lower costs per labor hour. In fact, I'm so sure of it, I will hold my breath until they sink some serious bucks into Kingsport...

If you don't hear from me, would you send someone over to resuscitate?

Anyway, back to the good news. The explosives maker said that before this recent recapitalization, every single bit of their explosives they made had been shoveled by hand. That absolutely staggered me. I can see this plant out of the window I'm sitting next to right now. Until 4 years ago, workers shoveled extremely high velocity explosives, as much as ten tons' worth, entirely by hand, about six Chicago blocks from where I write this.

Makes ya think.

Those stoker guys were probably among the first ones laid off. Hugely to their credit, there were no incidents of worker violence. Here in East Tennessee, violence is not caused by a rebellious attitude toward your employer, I guess. We get domestic violence, we get vehicular death, we get fights in bars...but nobody around here goes postal, it seems. People here are respectful and righteous. I admire that a lot.

If Eastman announces that they are opening a new facility in a foreign land, and shutting this one down, causing over ten thousand people to lose their jobs (in addition to the ten thousand plus that dribbled away since the 1960s), there will be no protests, no riots, no trouble at all except maybe a few people getting drunk and beating their spouses and children.

That's the way people here are. It reminds me so much of the song that ended Robert Altman's film, "Nashville."

If only we could figure out how to become irresistable to successful, progressive businesses. If we could, I can tell you there are some first-rate, committed people ready to work. Could almost guarantee that they won't shoot you.