Last refrigerator leaves Fort Smith’s Whirlpool

submitted photo

This is a photo of Whirlpool employees standing around one of the last refrigerators produced at the Fort Smith Whirlpool plant. A flag was placed on the refrigerator by employee  Larry Turner.

This photo was taken on Thursday 6/28/12
submitted photo This is a photo of Whirlpool employees standing around one of the last refrigerators produced at the Fort Smith Whirlpool plant. A flag was placed on the refrigerator by employee Larry Turner. This photo was taken on Thursday 6/28/12

— It was a white, 25-foot, side-by-side refrigerator with ice and water spigots on the freezer door.

It didn’t look much different from hundreds of thousands built over the years at Whirlpool Corp.’s big blue factory in Fort Smith.

But this was the last one.

Larry Turner, 56, of Greenwood had worked at the plant for 30 years, starting on the assembly line and moving upto maintenance. On Oct. 27, he heard the announcement that the factory would shut down in June, lay off nearly 1,000 workers and send production of its staple, 25-foot side-bysides to Mexico.

So when the last day of production arrived, he was ready. In his hands were a roll of tape and a picture of an American flag.

“I wanted to make a statement,” Turner said.

“I’m sad for myself. I’m sad for my community, my stateand this country.”

Friday, the Whirlpool plant that has been one of Fort Smith’s best-paying, big manufacturers for 45 years, sent most of its last hourly workers home. The final day of production, employees said, was Thursday.

The next day consisted mostly of shaking hands and signing papers. More than 800 hourly workers were laid off, with just a handful asked to stay a few weeks longer fortransition work, company employees said.

Whirlpool officials in the company’s Benton Harbor, Mich., office did not return phone calls and e-mails Friday. At the Fort Smith plant, a supervisor asked a news reporter to leave the property.

Workers started departing the building Friday morning, after plant managers announced they could go home early and still be paid for a full day. They carried cake remnants, flowers, manila envelopes and cardboard boxes as they climbed into cars and trucks in the parking lots.

“Several people were crying, hugging, saying goodbye,” said Cheryl Turner, Larry’s wife who also was laid off Friday. “It was a pretty sad day.”

The company’s shutdown in Fort Smith is one of Arkansas’ largest layoffs in at least six years, according to the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

The closing also will likely cost the Fort Smith area another 1,000 jobs, as Whirlpool suppliers downsize or go out of business, and as laid-off employees slow their spending.

Rick Hayes, 43, knows what the shutdown means tohis economy.

“It’s like a blow, a blow to the stomach,” the maintenance worker said. “I’m divorced, I raise a son. I worked there for 18 years. Igave 100 percent ... It’s going to be tough.”

When Hayes moved to Fort Smith from Muskogee, Okla., in 1992, people told him “Whirlpool is where you want to get a job,” he said. He applied and was turned down because he had no factory experience.

So Hayes went to work for two years at a local poultry plant. He got a job at Whirlpool in 1994. Now, factory jobs are drying up in Fort Smith and nationwide, moving to Mexico, China and other countries.

Hayes said he, like most of his coworkers, will sign up for a government program that will allow him to go to school while drawing unemployment. But he worries how he can get enough education in two years’ time to compete with college students or recent graduates for jobs outside of factories.

Meantime, he knows he’ll struggle financially.

Most hourly workers at the plant will get $6,000 in severance pay before taxes, about $2,500 in incentive money and about $450 a week in unemployment compensation. They’ll get three months of paid health insurance, then pay about $400 per month per person to maintain that insurance.

They may not hurt too badly for money for a few weeks. But after that, their situations could quickly become desperate.

Hayes nodded to his 11-year-old son Mason.

“I’ll be going to school during the day, then studying at night, so that will eat into my time with him,” he said.

“Money will be tight. I really fear for his future. He’s got to get that education. Theway things are going, when he comes along the middle class in this country will be gone.”

For Larry and Cheryl Turner, Whirlpool has been their family business.

Between them, they have almost 60 years at the appliance maker. He estimates he has at least a dozen family members who have worked there for a total of “about 250 years.” His mother, Ora Dees, retired from the company several years ago with 35 years on the job. He also lists brothers, a sister, nieces and cousins who have worked long stints in the factory.

Cheryl Turner, 58, said the couple and many coworkers are disgusted with the severance package. The United Steelworkers Union local, for which she is a representative, had negotiated for $1,000 for each year an employee had worked at the plant. Then they dropped that to $750 per year.

“They didn’t budge” from the $6,000 maximum, she said of company officials. “Yet they held pizza parties, barbecues and Whirlpool gave hundreds of thousands to charity,” she said. “That could have gone a long way toward giving their workers what they deserve. You know, some of these [Whirlpool employees] will be on charity.”

The Turners are also going back to school, hoping to learn enough to get new jobs until they retire.

“I’m not bitter,” he said. “But Whirlpool took our product and sent it to Mexico. And they took their workers and kicked us in the streets. I appreciate the time I spent there, but I don’t appreciate the way it ended.”

The closing has also affected the couple’s shopping habits.

“I never noticed much where products were made,” said Cheryl. “But I look now. I try to only buy American. That’s what everybody is going to have to do. It’s the only way to keep jobs in this country.”

That’s the message Larry Turner hoped to send Thursday, when the last side-by-side refrigerator rolled through the assembly line.

The atmosphere in the factory had been sad and stressed for days, he said.

Sometime after 10 a.m., “there were a lot of people gathering to watch the last box” go through, he said. Turner walked up and taped a picture of an American flag across the front.

“Everybody broke down - men, women, old, young,” he said. “They were crying and taking pictures. It was like I had turned on a water faucet.”

Turner said he wanted the product’s buyers to know they got the last side-by-side refrigerator made in Fort Smith, Ark., USA.

He wanted to show people that it matters where they buy their products.

And he wanted to remind everyone: “We’re Americans. This hurts. But we’ll get through this.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/30/2012

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