2006 Awards

SYLACAUGA — The factory’s days ended with a whimper.

Avondale Mills’ sprawling complex on Avondale Avenue was all but deserted Tuesday afternoon. On one side, trailers bearing the red, white and blue logo of Avondale sat idle. Most of the buildings were deserted.

Two churches on 10th Street displayed signs of support:

“AVONDALE ASSOCIATES: OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU” and “AVONDALE: THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!”

Once a flagship in Alabama’s growing, and later booming, textiles industry, the Sylacauga mill that saw the heyday of the loom and its lint has closed another chapter in the state’s economic history.

While the story is by now a familiar one, the tie to Alabama’s past is what made Avondale’s operation in Sylacauga seem larger, more resilient, than smaller or newer mills.

After all, Sylacauga residents reasoned, the man who set Avondale on its original course would later be a governor. Other plants went to Mexico, later farther south in Central America, and caused the mill workers to wonder about their peers, but Sylacauga’s Avondale – with the red, white and blue logo – seemed set to endure.

But now Avondale’s former credit union is a re-employment center. It attracted a great number of people in Avondale’s last days, but the mill itself was empty. The hourly employees had clocked their last shift the previous Friday; only supervisors remained on the final day.

“We’ve known for two months,” said Dean Drake, a grading and packing supervisor driving into the factory Tuesday. “But now it’s set in that it’s real.”

A colleague said she had been at the plant every day for four decades.

“It’s just a sad time,” she said before driving away from the plant. “I’ve been here for 40 years, and it’s just real bad.”

Skilled workers needed

While Avondale Mill’s situation is bad, the picture for Alabama manufacturing is mixed.

Despite the high-profile arrival of automobile companies like Hyundai, Honda and Mercedes-Benz, the state has lost nearly 55,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. According to the Manufacturers’ News, an Illinois-based manufacturing information company, Alabama lost 4,365 manufacturing jobs in 2005, a little over 1 percent of the total jobs in the sector, despite adding 54 plants.

Most people, when asked, will point to free trade agreements and overseas competition for the losses. Many, like AFL-CIO Alabama president Stewart Burkhalter, blame China.

“You can’t take someone working under child labor, prison labor, slave labor, pay them 1 cent to 15 cents an hour and expect people to buy stuff made here,” he said. “When you have a president that says it’s good for the American economy to outsource jobs to China, I don’t believe that sets us on a level playing field.”

The mass production of textiles began moving overseas several years ago to cut labor costs. Historians will point out that’s the same reason textile mills moved down to Alabama in the 1880s from New England — and why they had moved from England the generation before that.

The textile industry, however, is more than clothing, and Peter Schwartz, head of the Textile Department at Auburn University, says some sectors – particularly those that make specialty products – still are doing quite well.

“Carpets had one of their best years last year,” he said. “The fabrics that are used in disposables, hygiene products, medical products, companies like Kimberly Clark — they’re doing well. Industrial fabrics and highly engineered technical fabrics are doing well.”

Those products, however, require highly skilled workers, Schwartz said, and would not employ workers on the scale of a textile plant that produces clothing.

Ironically, Alabama’s low unemployment rate — at 3.6 percent, virtually full employment — means some firms have had a hard time filling positions.

“The other thing that’s hurting textile companies, quite honestly, are the automobile companies,” Schwartz said. “The automobile companies pay better than the textile companies, and they’re attracting the most skilled workers.

“It’s a mixed blessing with those companies.”

Investment in Alabama manufacturing soared from $1.3 billion in 2001 to $4.6 billion in 2005, mainly for plants and equipment.

“If we continue that trend, we’re going to steadily start adding jobs back,” said George Clark, the president of Manufacture Alabama, a manufacturing trade group. “The problem is, where are we going to get the workers?

Third Congressional District Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks, blames the decline in Alabama manufacturing jobs on free-trade agreements such as NAFTA, and on foreign competition. Rogers voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement last year. He said he did so only after rewriting the bill to protect textiles, and after Avondale Mills assured him that CAFTA would not hurt its business.

Rogers, whose family has roots in the textiles industry, says the key to the future of Alabama’s manufacturing jobs is to expand the state’s Office of Workforce Development programs into high schools, to catch teenagers who may not be interested in or suited for college.

“The fact is, China has unfair trade practices,” says Rogers, pointing to the country’s subsidies of industries and devaluation of its currency. “Those are unfair trade practices, and we need to ensure we have protection against those.

“But we need to realize it’s not just China.”

Reopening the free-trade agreements is highly unlikely, and almost certainly would be politically toxic to anyone who did so, Schwartz said.

“The average consumer would raise holy hell because prices would go up with the imposition of tariffs,” he said. “The average American would see prices go up and raise holy hell, and I don’t think it would help the textile industry.”

A death in the family

Avondale Mills blamed the closing in part on a train derailment in South Carolina in January, 2005 that released toxic gas, killing nine and injuring 250. The derailment also did significant damage to an Avondale plant there, and the company said it could not overcome the challenges that created.

For now, the 1,100 workers who lost their jobs are trying to move on. Earlier this month the U.S. Department of Labor provided job retraining assistance, allowing workers to apply for unemployment benefits and up to two years of education. The state has set up a re-employment center in an old credit union near the former facility; Gwen Taylor, the Alabama Career Service Supervisor in charge of the facility, said they’ve had about 600 visits since the center opened three weeks ago.

“I guess some of them are still in shock,” said Taylor, sitting at desk behind what formerly was a teller’s window. “Some look at it as an opportunity to do something else. And for some, it was the only thing they’ve ever done.”

Ruben Perez, 35, sat at a table, filling out an application. He came to Sylacauga from Veracruz, Mexico, six years ago to work at Avondale. He worked his way up and became a weaver, going from $7.50 an hour to $12 an hour — money he used to support his father, mother and siblings.

“It’s sad,” he said. “This plant supported our family. It’s like a second home.”

The plant employed a number of Mexican workers, he said. Some have moved back to Mexico. Perez said he’s willing to do “anything” to earn a living. But he can’t afford to move to a larger city such as Birmingham, and he doesn’t expect to earn as much in the next job he gets.

For Sylacauga and its surrounding hill country, Avondale provided a good income.

Supervisor Dean, outside the gates on Tuesday, said she hopes to get another job. She’d be interested in going back to school for two years to get a degree. But she and others all say they want to stay in Sylacauga, Taylor said. Sylacauga is home.

“Most of these people are not interested in going some place else,” Taylor said. “I personally have not spoken with anyone who wants to go somewhere else.”

That doesn’t surprise Joe Richardson, executive director of the Sylacauga Chamber of Commerce.

“There’s an emotional impact,” Richardson said. “People are third- and fourth-generation workers there. Some never even filled out a job application. All they know is Avondale. That speaks highly of their work ethic, and it speaks highly of Avondale.”

Sylacauga, sitting on Talladega County’s southern flank, has about 12,500 residents. Developers say the town is blessed by its proximity to Alabama 21, U.S. 231 and U.S. 280. It has attracted retail business and has a relatively stable downtown area. Many former mill towns don’t have that going for them when the last whistle blows, economic experts say.

Sylacauga also has attracted nine manufacturing firms since 1997, bringing in about 1,000 jobs, said Calvin Miller, executive director of the Talladega County Economic Development Authority.

“The problem that we have is the economy is changing from textile-related to other manufacturing,” he said. “It seems that rather than getting ahead, we’re just breaking even.”

Richardson said he expects many workers to work outside Sylacauga. His goal is to keep them living in the town, he said.

Merchants along Broadway are generally taking a wait-and-see attitude. Many said that Avondale Mills, which had been shrinking for several years, had less of an impact on their business than it once did. But some could feel it regardless.

“It’s already hurting us,” said Charlie Simmons, owner of Charlie’s Clothing on Broadway in Sylacauga. “It could be gas prices, but this month’s been extremely slow. I guess people are nervous about it, holding onto their money.”

Many were philosophical about the closing. Linda Hatchett, the assistant director of the Isabel Anderson Comer Center on Broadway, worked in Avondale’s benefits department for 30 years. Now she’s surrounded by artifacts and other archaeological finds from Central Alabama’s past. There’s the Sylacauga History Room, a Pioneer Room, Civil War exhibits, World War II memorabilia and homage to local notables Jim Nabors, Bill Nichols and Gen. J.W. Crysel.

Hatchett said the closing was like losing a relative, but that people would adjust.

“This is happening all over the country,” she said. “You don’t die. You just move on.”