The workers are promoting themselves online and in trade magazines as a made-to-order work force in a last-ditch effort to remain neighbors in their small central Pennsylvania town.
"A lot of us have grown up here, we walk to work and our kids go to school here," said Jim Afton, a 37-year-old senior staff engineer who has worked for FCI since 1987. "We decided instead of disbanding and going our separate ways, we wanted to do something different."
The idea of sticking together came this spring, when FCI -- a maker of components for the telecommunications and computer industry -- announced it would shutter the plant. The company once employed as many as 750 people.
Looking to Help Another Company
Initially, workers thought about collecting resumes and sending them out in heaps to potential employers. Then, Betsy Savel, an operator on the assembly line, suggested a Web site touting the engineers, toolmakers and line workers as a single work force in search of an employer.
But they are hoping they don't have to leave, hoping that someone who sees their online offer or one of the quarter-page advertisements they've been sending to trade magazines will realize all they can offer.
Sonnie Gearhart, 47, is a toolmaker who grew up in Clearfield and walks four blocks to the plant every day. He believes the 26 engineers, 74 tool and die makers, 16 managers, 208 assembly line workers and the 30 workers in shipping, computer support and other support jobs would be an asset to any interested company.
"We've had a perfect attendance average of eight years ... most employees have never missed a day," Gearhart said.
Town's Economy Has Struggled
In Clearfield, a town of 6,631 people about 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, the local economy has struggled in recent years. Its coalmines have closed. So have the brickyards that once manufactured firebricks for steel mills. A textile industry that thrived decades ago has shriveled to almost nothing.
Now, workers read news about plant closings as they would an obituary page. Global competition is often blamed for the shutdowns of former competitors and partners alike.
The telecommunications industry had a banner year in 2000 but then slumped badly, and Paris-based FCI began laying off workers.
At the Clearfield plant, which has been in operation since 1966 under three different owners, word came in April that remaining employees would be laid off. They were not offered jobs at FCI's two other Pennsylvania plants because future demand appears weak, company spokeswoman Sheila Himes said.
The company is wishing its workers the best in whatever it takes for them to find jobs, Himes said.
Workers at FCI are out of places to work in the region -- even retail jobs have been hurt with the closing of local Ames and Kmart stores, said Don McClincy, executive director of the Clearfield Foundation, a nonprofit group that fosters economic development in the region.
"This community has been smacked a few times -- smacked by the clay industry, smacked by the coal industry, smacked by the textile industry," McClincy said. "They [the workers] have stuck together during adversity in the past and you are seeing people of character at work here."
Success is Hard to Predict
The employees believe another company may recognize a unique opportunity in Clearfield, and, on their Web site, boast of hundreds of years of experience in tool fabrication, plastic injection molding, metal stamping and engineering.
Whether their efforts are likely to attract a new company depends on many factors, experts said.
"It's a really slim shot," said Brad Watts, an analyst for the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich. "It being a smaller group like that, it probably gives it a better chance. I guess it's really dependent on the skill makeup of the work force and what they're willing to take if another company calls them."
Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School, said the idea sounds a lot like factory workers in the 1980s who tried to present themselves as a work force to potential employers and then went on to try to purchase the factories themselves.
"There are at least some indications companies are picking locations based on the work force, but you've got to have a pretty tight labor market," he said.
He also said that the more technical skills a work force has, the better chance of generating interest.
That the employees are "already familiar with operating in the high-tech milieu" could be a big selling point, agreed Adam Bruns, managing editor of Site Selection, a magazine specializing in corporate real estate and economic development issues.
Companies "want that talented work force to already be there as well as wanting a quality of life conducive to the people they want to bring there," Bruns said.
The workers themselves, of course, make Clearfield sound like the small-town America people dream of.
"My kids have gone to school here, and my neighbors are my good friends," said Rick Conklin, an engineer who has lived in Clearfield for 23 years and has a home two blocks from the plant. "It's home now, and it's hard to think about leaving."
Copyright 2002. Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
