The Cancer Factory by Jim Morris

Author:Jim Morris [Morris, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

RAY AND HARRY GET BAD NEWS

ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 28, 1996, Harry Weist came to work at Goodyear and was approached in the maintenance shop by a nervous friend who’d deduced something bad was about to happen. The friend’s suspicion was confirmed later that morning. A member of the union’s executive board, he attended a meeting called by corporate and learned that Goodyear planned to shut down Department 145—vinyl—at the end of the year. He told Harry, who joined other workers at an all-staff meeting the same day. Harry felt badly for his friends, assuming many of them would soon be unemployed. The Buffalo News reported that 166 of 263 jobs at the plant would be eliminated. According to the newspaper, “The Akron, Ohio-based company said the operation is too small to be competitive and does not fit into its core operations. Goodyear said returns on [its polyvinyl chloride] business have been unsatisfactory and the long-term outlook is poor due to the high cost of technology and keeping up equipment.”

Harry had nearly nineteen years at the plant and felt safe. Then Goodyear announced it would be cutting people with up to twenty-five years, and Harry’s sense of security crumbled. He managed to hang on until January 1997, having been retained to dismantle and mothball the equipment in Department 145. He was among the last to be laid off, and was unhappy with the severance package he received, which, beyond pay and vacation time owed, included a $1,500 bonus and no extended health coverage. It was the first time he’d felt truly disillusioned with the company.

A bad situation was made worse by plant manager Les Carnahan, who despised Harry and the union. The men had a run-in at a company golf tournament in the summer of 1996. Harry, then hot-tempered, threatened to crush Carnahan’s skull with a golf club after Carnahan made an ill-advised joke about the impending layoffs. Months later, Harry, newly unemployed, came to the gatehouse to pay his health insurance premium and ran into Carnahan, who said within earshot of others, “Don’t get discouraged. You’ll be coming back.” Carnahan then summoned Harry close and said in a low voice, “You’re never coming back, you motherfucker.” But Carnahan, too, would lose his job.

Harry was recalled to Goodyear for a few weeks in the spring of 1997 to help install a reactor in Department 245, then was out for almost a year. He found it hard to get decent-paying work, and his income fell by two-thirds. Diane went to work for a company that made jewelry, lamps, and desk sets. Harry signed on with an industrial maintenance contractor that bid on the “hardest, dirtiest jobs.” He especially loathed the Cascades paper mill in Niagara Falls, a filthy maw with a sulfurous stink. He worked eighteen or nineteen hours a day in conditions far more treacherous than what he’d known at Goodyear; one of his coworkers was cut in two. Harry felt aimless during his time away from Goodyear.

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