A matter of time

Washington residents brace for calendar plant’s closure

By Jim O’Neal
The Gazette

WASHINGTON, Iowa – Employees of Norwood Promotional Products here dread the days delineated by the 2004 calendars they’ve just made.
By the time the factory closes in January, some 200 people – most of them middle-aged – will have lost their jobs, their benefits and a sense of employment security they long took for granted.
The Norwood shutdown and Crane Valves’ closure of its foundry in September are a one-two punch for this town of about 7,000. City leaders say the community will absorb the blows and move ahead with faith in the future.
When the calendar plant shuts its doors – Norwood has not given workers an exact closure date Washington County’s unemployment rate will flick up from the modest 3.4 percent posted in the second quarter of this year, before Crane laid off about 60 workers.
The new figure won’t convey the distress caused by the ending of a Washington tradition.
Washington-area residents have been making calendars since 1903, when H.H. McCleery began the venture that would become the McCleery-Cummins Co., for years the largest manufacturing employer in Washington.
Indianapolis-based Norwood, the largest supplier in the promotional products industry, bought McCleery-Cummins from Bemrose USA in 1999. It has since concentrated printing operations at its plant in Sleepy Eye, Minn., said Kurt Spitler, president of Norwood’s publishing division.
He said the plants Norwood is closing in Washington and Canada are outmoded.
“You’re going to keep the location open that has the most technology,” Spitler said. “It was a pretty cut-and-dried decision as to what facility was going to remain.”
That sort of bottom-line talk rankles employees whose loyalty is so seasoned they still slip into referring to the plant as McCleery.
“It really hurts when a corporation comes and buys us out and writes us off,” said Charlotte Stalder of Wayland, who, along with her husband, Dennis, has worked at the plant since 1963. “It’s a bad situation for the town. It makes us very angry.”
Stalder, 60, said she’s not prepared to leave the workforce but doesn’t expect to fare well in the job market.
“I want to retire when my age is up,” she said. “I planned to retire at 62 or 63, not in a couple of days.”
Norwood employee Mary Ann Longbine, 49, of Washington, said townspeople have long identified with the plant and grieve the loss.
“It’s totally devastating for Norwood people and the town,” she said. “We celebrated 100 years in September. That’s a lot of history. This is a small town. They (Norwood executives) have no idea of the concept that we worked under for so many years.”
Longbine said the loss of health insurance poses a grave hardship for her and her husband, Jim, an agricultural chemical applicator who has long been covered under his wife’s health plan.
“That’s a huge, huge, huge impact,” Longbine said. “The majority of people from Norwood are middle-aged, and finding somebody to insure 40-, 50-, 60-year-olds is very hard.”
Displaced workers have a right to temporarily retain their enrollment in group health coverage under COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986. However, they must pay the portions of their premiums formerly paid by their employers, and the cost can be prohibitive.
“It’ll take you two weeks of unemployment checks to pay for COBRA,” Longbine said. “I don’t understand how they expect people to afford that.”
Some displaced workers are turning to Washington County Public Health and the HAWK-I (Healthy and Well Kids in Iowa) program to obtain health care for their children.
“I’m seeing a number of those people coming in and asking for assistance with those programs, specifically from Norwood and Crane,” said Jen Weidman, social worker for Washington County Public Health.
The Hawkeye Area Community Action Program (HACAP) is doing its part to help displaced workers get through the tough times.
“We are getting quite a few people come in for energy assistance and food pantry boxes that have stated that they were recently laid off,” said Dawn McCoy, HACAP site supervisor for Washington County.
Assistance also is available to those prepared to learn new job skills. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao last week authorized a pair of grants totaling more than $1.3 million to retrain laid-off workers in Eastern Iowa.
Kirkwood Training and Outreach Center (KTOC) will provide the training and guidance services funded by one of the grants, a $532,000 allocation for workers losing jobs at four companies, including Norwood and Crane.
Nancy Rash, director of the Kirkwood Washington Center, said Norwood employees began making inquiries once they were informed of the pending shutdown the first week of September.
“We’ve had an increased number of people coming in, asking about what they do to improve their computer skills,” Rash said.
Rash encourages those who are losing long-held jobs to make use of “Choices,” a computer program that assesses vocational skills and interests, before deciding on a course of study.
Norwood is offering severance pay to workers who stay until the closing. Several employees declined to speak to The Gazette about the effect of the plant closing on their lives for fear of jeopardizing their severance.
Ed Raber, executive director of the Washington Economic Development Group, said the Norwood closing will affect the town’s culture because many of its employees worked only the second half of each year – the calendar industry’s busy season – and so had more time than year-round workers to volunteer in community service.
Though mindful of the anxieties of those losing their jobs, Raber said the people of Washington have proved themselves resilient and resourceful.
“We have a pretty vibrant commercial district downtown,” Raber said. “I don’t think you’ll find any businesses closing up shop. In fact, we have people who have been laid off in the last several years who have started new businesses.”
Dale Torpey, president and CEO of Federation Bank, said the bank is declaring its confidence in Washington’s future by investing $750,000 in the purchase and rehabilitation of the building it occupies on the town square.
Already, he said, three tenants have signed leases for the newly available office space on the building’s fourth and fifth floors.
The town will weather the Norwood closing just as it toughed out the sharp downturn in the agricultural economy in the 1980s, he said.
“This is a viable town,” Torpey said. “This is something we’d just as soon not happen, but it has. But there will be jobs in the area, and we’ll work through it.”
The Norwood plant may not remain idle for long. Don Pfeiler, an Iowa Realty agent who is listing the 207,000-square-foot facility, said representatives of “a very strong prospect” will make a second visit to the site next week.
He said that unnamed company would provide jobs but that the size of its payroll would be “nowhere near” that of Norwood.

For assistance
Kirkwood Washington Center: (319) 653-4655
Hawkeye Area Community Action Program: (319) 653-7275
Washington County Public Health: (319) 653-7270

Caption:
Wood Construction employees Kurt Flory (left) and Matt Wood, both of Washington, remodel an office at Federation Bank last week in Washington. One of the town’s employers, Norwood Promotional Products, is closing its Washington plant in January. Another employer, Crane Valves, closed its foundry in September. But despite losses, officials say the town’s businesses are strong. Federation Bank is investing $750,000 to buy and remodel the building it occupies on the town square.
Buzz Orr/The Gazette
This story ran in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on Dec. 28, 2003.