American Made: What happens to people when work disappears

American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears, by Farah Stockman (New York: Random House, 2021)

Welcome to the Class War! 

Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times journalist Farah Stockman’s account of the closing of the Indianapolis-based ball-bearing plant, Rexnord Manufacturing, is the latest contribution to an existing extensive literature that explores the effects of deindustrialization in the Midwest. Her account follows the lives of three Indiana workers as they navigate what has now become an all too familiar process of job loss, long-term unemployment, and the lack of reasonable income alternatives. Her narrative weaves the impact of the well-publicized plant closure with the personal experiences of Shannon Mulcahy, Wally Hall, and John Feltner, all employees at the doomed plant. Many will recall that the closing of Rexnord came to national notoriety when, then president-elect Donald Trump, tweeted that, the Indiana plant closure was a problem that was occurring across the nation, and that he would put an end to it. Instilled in Trump´s pretentious tweet was a promise to American workers that he would save American manufacturing, and particularly the jobs at Rexnord. Neither occurred, four years later, the Trump presidency did not “save American manufacturing” much less the jobs at Rexnord. 

But the Rexnord closing is not an isolated event, the script for this story has been playing out, time and again for a long while. I have lived and worked in Indiana as a professor of Labor Studies for almost 20 years, during which time I have witnessed many plant closures and local union mergers and met many Shannon´s, Wally´s, and John´s. Their lives and experiences abound and have reshaped working-class communities for a while in this neck of the woods.   In many ways, Stockman´s account provides a grueling view of modern working-class life that is not particular to the Midwest. In some aspects American Made is a case study of the human cost of plant closures and unemployment; a process that underscored the emergence of neoliberalism in the United States, and rarely considered when businesses (after receiving years of tax abatements and subsidies), decide to “take the money and run”. As a journalistic account, American Made prioritizes the personal experiences of three workers, weaving very nicely into the narrative the process of deindustrialization and the many contradictions, both political and personal, that neoliberalism levies on workers and their families.  

In this context, deindustrialization is but one factor of a much broader process driven by the wholesale attack on workers and their organizations, which resulted in the long-term decline of union representation and overall conditions of working-class life. At the same time, while the wages and income of workers have declined, productivity rates increased substantially. In this sense, deindustrialization and the decline in good-paying stable jobs are not simply a reflection of the lack of morals, as immoral as the process of deindustrialization is, and has been. At the center of this process is the decline of working-class political power and organization, the use of federal labor law to slow down and constrain labor organizing and union representation rather than protect the collective aspirations of workers on the job. The attack on organized labor is, and has been, an objective strategy of neoliberal politics. The prevalence of market-driven policies in detriment to the wellbeing and interests of workers has been implemented and supported by Republicans and most Democrats since the early 1970s. The resolution to job loss and low wages, a characteristic of working-class life will not be resolved by wishing that businesses “do the right thing” for workers. Any notion of common interest partnerships, popular in the 1980s and 90s, between employees and businesses, or that a meritocratic system of rewards will revive American manufacturing is delusional at best. Most worker-employer programs have long since gone the way of the dodo bird, and meritocracy is a corporate chimera since the laws that regulate worker-employer relations are highly antagonistic to workers and their unions and only further longstanding inequalities. What becomes clear is that any approach to halting the effects of deindustrialization must involve a strategy where workplace political mobilization and organization converge, uniting union and non-union workers.

But acknowledging the damaging effects and constraints of neoliberalism on workers and unions is only part of the equation. Any reversal of the current trends requires that the scale and scope of collective bargaining and representation at work undertake significant transformations if the quality of working-class life is to improve. Samir Sonti offered a reasonable alternative to counter the corporate neoliberal onslaught on unions and their workers. He argued, “…improving the conditions of work requires going beyond the firm and bargaining at the sectoral level. Precedents for such exist in the tripartite agreements briefly established during the New Deal and World War II…This success demonstrated the concrete ways in which workplace struggle can be politicized even for those without a union.”

American Made is not simply an account of the disastrous effects of deindustrialization and corporate greed, all of which have been well documented. Stockman incorporates the personal experiences of Shannon, Wally, and John into a much more complex and nuanced discussion of class consciousness and the contradictions that shape working-class life and politics; illustrated by the popularity of Donald Trump among sectors of the working class. The class contradictions reflected in her account are an important part of a broader and ongoing discussion among many different groups, scholars, politicians, analysts and, no less, academics of labor and working-class studies. The emergence of authoritarian neoliberalism, market-centered political forces, with overtly fascist characteristics, and why do they attract support from sectors of the working-class is an essential part of understanding working-class politics in the current context.  It is important to recognize the factors that underscored the process of neoliberal globalization.  One noteworthy contributor to this debate, Sam Gindin, argued, “Neoliberalism established, Adolph Reed Jr. has tersely noted, a ‘capitalism without effective working-class opposition.’ And class was a discourse that conservative, liberal and social democratic politicians were all too anxious happy to marginalize. Globalization, no less a class project, allowed elites to respond to discontent on a more comfortable terrain of national unfairness, tending to normalize the neoliberal policy regime.” One trend of neoliberal development in the United States, that many refused to acknowledge in the past, even after the events of January 6, 2020, is how neoliberal globalization has morphed into a major threat against very basic democratic rights and its long term effect, where the lack of a strong organized labor movement provides fertile ground for pro-market neo-fascists to make inroads among workers.  

The debate about deindustrialization cannot occur without placing center-stage the political process that underscores neoliberalism, and the ‘matter of fact’ support for this process by liberals and conservatives alike; driven by the continued privatization of the public good.  As Bertolt Brecht wrote:

“Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of fascism, are like those who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against the barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.”  

The issues Stockman raises go far beyond the closing of Rexnord. Hopefully, readers will not consider American Made in the same light as another great book, The Jungle, authored by fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Upton Sinclair, who stated, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident, I hit it in the stomach.” 

Reviewed by William Mello, Associate Professor of Labor Studies, Indiana University