{"id":152742,"date":"2015-05-20T18:19:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T18:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=152742"},"modified":"2015-05-20T18:19:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T18:19:00","slug":"deindustrialization-baltimore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/money\/deindustrialization-baltimore\/","title":{"rendered":"The deindustrialization of Baltimore"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Nick Barrickman<\/p>\n

\n

(WSWS<\/a>) – It has been more than a month since Freddie Gray was killed in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department. The 25-year-old man\u2019s death set off a wave of protests and isolated rioting as residents voiced their anger against police brutality and the impoverished conditions that especially deny young people any decent prospects for a future.<\/p>\n

The reaction of federal, state and local officials was to declare a state of emergency and unleash a military occupation of the city. Maryland\u2019s Republican governor Larry Hogan ordered up to 5,000 National Guardsmen and additional law enforcement personnel to patrol the streets with armored vehicles used in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Baltimore\u2019s Democratic Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake imposed a curfew. Hundreds were arrested and held under barbaric and illegal conditions as any semblance of democratic forms was essentially suspended.<\/p>\n

While the media and organizations in the orbit of the Democratic Party sought to portray the events largely in racial terms, the fact is the city\u2019s political establishment is largely made up of African Americans. This includes Mayor Rawlings-Blake, the police chief, the majority of the City Council and three of the six cops indicted for Freddie Gray\u2019s murder. Expressing the contempt of the privileged social layer she speaks for, Rawlings-Blake denounced the youth as \u201cthugs\u201d and \u201ccriminals,\u201d in remarks later echoed by President Obama. She went on to say, \u201cit is idiotic to think that by destroying your city, you\u2019re going to make life better for anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a historical fact, however, that the handful of businesses looted and burned in the eruption of spontaneous and entirely understandable social anger is nothing in comparison to the systematic destruction long wrought by the corporate and financial interests Rawlings-Blake and the rest of the political establishment defend. A review of the systematic destruction of decent-paying jobs and the impoverishment of the large portions of the population\u2013black, white and immigrant\u2013exposes who the real vandals are.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bethlehem Steel [courtesy of steel-photo.org]<\/div>\n

Once an industrial hub for steel, ship building, automotive, electronics and chemical manufacturing, the city of 622,000 people today lies in a near-ruined state as idled factories and acre after acre of abandoned industrial wasteland litter the region.<\/p>\n

Throughout the twentieth century, Baltimore was synonymous with steel, as the region began producing in 1887. Upon establishing its mill at nearby Sparrows Point in 1917, the Bethlehem Steel Company ordered over 10,000 living units constructed to house the plant\u2019s workforce, eventually employing half the town in its massive steel operations.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bethlehem Steel in 1973<\/div>\n

The mill would go on to become the largest in the world throughout the middle of the twentieth century, producing hundreds of thousands of tons of steel each year to build the Golden Gate bridge and the tunnels to New York City and much of its skyline. Bethlehem\u2019s shipbuilding operations, started in 1905, manufactured and repaired cruise ships, cargo and other commercial vessels and over 1,100 military ships in World War II alone.<\/p>\n

In addition to Bethlehem, which was the eighth largest company in the US, numerous other manufacturing firms, including General Motors, Solo Cup and Huish Detergents (now Sun Products) employed tens of thousands of workers in the city.<\/p>\n

\"\"A protest agains plant closures in the 1980s<\/div>\n

\u201cBethlehem Steel wasn\u2019t even the highest-paying steel job back then; Eastern Stainless cleaned up as far as that was concerned,\u201d said Pete, a former Bethlehem Steel worker who spoke with the World Socialist Web Site<\/em>. \u201cWorking at the [Bethlehem Steel mill\u2019s] blast furnace department, it was a hard job, but it provided a good workout and the best part was that you worked as a team; everyone, even the guys managing, had to put in work there,\u201d Pete said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were so many opportunities [in Baltimore],\u201d Pete continued, noting that \u201cas a working-class kid, we weren\u2019t so concerned with going to college; it was all about where we would be going to work: there were so many places. To the west of the city there were places like the General Motors plant, which I worked at starting in 1976. Back then the plant would put together a car a minute,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

Prior to the 1970s, the city\u2019s population grew to over 900,000 residents as an influx of working-class families from Europe, the American South and other locations sought out jobs within the region\u2019s sprawling manufacturing sector. Throughout this period, nearly one-third of Baltimore\u2019s population would be employed in manufacturing, with 35,000 workers employed at Bethlehem Steel alone in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI arrived in Baltimore from Atlantic City on April 1, 1966, and had a job working at the steel mill by April 6. It all changed once American steel stopped selling and cheaper, high-quality steel from overseas started coming in. The steel in America started getting worse, actually,\u201d said Lester, a retired steel worker with more than 37 years experience, told the WSWS.<\/p>\n

\"\"Former Bethlehem Steel workers Lester, Ronald and Pete<\/div>\n

As with other cities located in once-powerful industrial regions in the US, higher-paying manufacturing jobs began drying up throughout the 1960s and 1970s as international competition forced the American ruling class to abandon its previous policies of class compromise. Beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s, the corporate and financial elite, with the full backing of both big-business parties, embarked on a slash-and-burn policy, including a wave of factory closings, mass layoffs, union busting, and the destruction of wages, benefits and social programs. This coincided with shifting production to lower cost countries and the domination of the US economy on ever-greater forms of financial parasitism.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Bethlehem Steel sold its Sparrows Point operations to Baltimore Marine Industries, Inc., a subsidiary of the equity management firm Veritas Capital. The plant underwent several other changes of ownership before finally shuttering for good last year. Bethlehem Steel declared bankruptcy in 2001 and its assets, including the Sparrows Point mill, were taken over by billionaire asset stripper Wilbur Ross\u2013who promptly imposed deep concessions on active steel workers while slashing the pensions and health benefits of some 95,000 retirees and dependents.<\/p>\n

Ross flipped the company to Indian steelmaker ArcelorMittal, and after changing hands again it was finally liquidated, wiping out 2,000 jobs at the mill and another 1,000 related jobs. In January 2015, the last symbol of the sprawling steel works, the 320-foot-tall \u201cL\u201d blast furnace\u2013the largest blast furnace in the Western Hemisphere\u2013was reduced to a pile of twisted metal by demolition explosives.<\/p>\n

In 2005, General Motors closed a 70-year-old van assembly plant in the city, resulting in over 1,000 job losses. From 1970 until 2000, Baltimore lost as many as 100,000 manufacturing jobs as companies shuttered plants and moved to areas with a more readily exploitable workforce.<\/p>\n

According to Thomas J. Vicino, author of an authoritative 2009 study on deindustrialization in Baltimore, manufacturing work went from employing a third of the city\u2019s workforce in 1970 to less than seven percent in 2000.<\/p>\n

The effects of this process have been devastating for the working population in the city, leaving the official unemployment rate at 8.2 percent, or more than three points higher than the state average and the US as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll cities have their divide between the haves and the have-nots. But Baltimore stands out for the extent of its gap, as well as the proximity of the two extremes,\u201d stated the Washington Post<\/em> in an article posted in its Wonkblog section last month. The article noted that life expectancy in parts of the city is worse than in parts of the developing world, including in North Korea and Syria.<\/p>\n

According to a 2014 report released by the Maryland Alliance for the Poor, more than 150,000 people in the city of Baltimore live below the official poverty line. A family at the poverty line has less than half of the required income to rent a standard market rate two-bedroom apartment. The report notes that over 36 percent of children in the city live in poverty.<\/p>\n

Noting the connection to the decline in living standards, deindustrialization and the role of the trade unions, Ronnie, a former steel worker, told the WSWS, \u201cthe decline of living standards in Baltimore goes back to the betrayal of the 1977-78 miners\u2019 strike,\u201d referring to the 110-day miners\u2019 strike, which was sold out by the United Mine Workers despite the miners\u2019 defiance of then-President Carter\u2019s back-to-work order.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [coal miners] were fighting against conditions faced by the entire working class,\u201d said Ronnie, adding that \u201cthe AFL-CIO should have issued a trumpet call to all workers to support the strike, but it didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1980s then saw betrayal after betrayal. The defeat of the 1981 PATCO [Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization] strike \u201crested with the AFL-CIO as well,\u201d stated Ronnie. \u201cI remember in 1981 over 500,000 union members marched in Washington DC in support of the PATCO strike, which President Ronald Reagan sought to crush. I was at the march with United Steelworkers Local 2610. I remember holding up a sign in solidarity with PATCO strikers, which some [air traffic control workers] saw and voiced their appreciation for. I asked them to come speak at my local in order to give their perspective on the strike and remember being opposed by my union\u2019s leadership, which had been given orders from on high to isolate the strike,\u201d Ronnie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue isn\u2019t that workers are apathetic, that\u2019s far from the case,\u201d concluded Ronnie, adding that \u201cit was because of their political leadership; all of these unions are tied to the Democrats and oppose a struggle by the working class in defense of their jobs and living standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The Bethlehem Steel yard today<\/div>\n

In place of manufacturing, low-wage service sector jobs have become the main employers in the Baltimore region. In the same period from 1970 to 2000, regional service sector jobs more than doubled from 70,000 to over 200,000 positions.<\/p>\n

The Baltimore Sun<\/em> admitted in a comment on the opening of an Amazon Distribution Center\u2013located on the site of a shuttered GM van assembly plant\u2013that \u201c[the distribution center] will not have the economic impact of the sort of higher-paying manufacturing jobs that have left Baltimore in such great numbers since the 1970s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Amazon Distribution Center located at the site of a former General Motors plant – east Baltimore<\/div>\n

The number of young people searching for employment has far outstripped the availability even of low-paying, temporary jobs. Mayor Rawlings-Blake recently announced a summer jobs program intended to hire an additional 2,000-3,000 youth, hoping to stem concerns about the lack of jobs available to the city\u2019s youth. The paltriness of this program is exposed by figures released in a 2014 think tank study on youth employment, which noted that over 11,000 youth aged 14-21 applied for the city\u2019s YouthWorks program that year, with many thousands more being eligible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve heard of \u2018food deserts\u2019 [environments in which access to fresh food is scarce] in the inner cities before, but there also exists such a thing as a \u2018job desert\u2019 too, in which the only jobs on offer in a community you must have connections of some kind to get,\u201d stated Karl Alexander, a research professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University in an interview with the WSWS.<\/p>\n

In 2006, Alexander authored the study The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood<\/em>, which tracked the lives of several hundred disadvantaged youth in the city throughout their adolescence and early adulthood.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the likelihood of a disadvantaged child obtaining the education needed to work in the city\u2019s growing IT sector, Alexander noted that less than four percent of the poor children he tracked in his study obtained a bachelor\u2019s degree. \u201cTypical poor kids do not finish high school,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cWhat\u2019s available to these kids? Their disadvantages multiply [throughout their lives] because all they ever experience is poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latoya, a 29-year-old working mother from west Baltimore, told the WSWS of her own experiences. \u201cIt is really hard; I\u2019ve been without a decent job, have had places which only call me in to work once or twice a month. I\u2019ve gone to employment centers and no one calls back. I\u2019m happy now to have a decent job, but most of them you\u2019re both overworked and underpaid,\u201d she said. She added that managers can abuse employees and recalled being fired while working at a fast-food restaurant simply for being at work when the business was robbed.<\/p>\n

Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 struck, the job losses have accelerated. Maryland has lost 25,000 jobs since 2007, more than all but seven other states, plus the District of Columbia, according to a 2013 analysis by the Baltimore Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

While rejecting out of hand any expansion of government-funded jobs to rebuild the city\u2019s impoverished neighborhoods, Baltimore\u2019s Democratic politicians and the Obama administration have pushed \u201cpublic-private partnerships,\u201d to lift regulations and taxes on businesses to promote supposed \u201ceconomic growth.\u201d Last month, Obama announced the creation of several \u201cEconomic Promise Zones\u201d in high-poverty areas, including St. Louis County, which includes Ferguson, where social unrest erupted late last year over the police killing of Michael Brown.<\/p>\n

Far from ameliorating the conditions of chronic unemployment, let alone lifting tens of thousands of Baltimore residents from poverty as the city\u2019s industries did for an earlier generation, such schemes only enrich a thin layer of exploiters, including minority business owners. They in turn rely on the police to defend their property and wealth against a largely impoverished population.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Nick Barrickman (WSWS) – It has been more than a month since Freddie Gray was killed in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department. The 25-year-old man\u2019s death set off a wave of protests and isolated rioting as residents voiced their anger against police brutality and the impoverished conditions that especially deny young people any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,52,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-152742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-money","9":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}