My hometown gets screwed by a giant corporation

Today's news hit me like a ton of bricks.

I grew up in Herrin, a small town of 11,000 people in Southern Illinois.

Growing up, there were two major industries in the area. The first was coal mining, which is now mostly gone. I understand the reasoning behind the Clean Air Act, but with the environmental benefits there was a cost... It made Southern Illinois coal essentially useless, and cost alot of jobs.

The other industry was a factory. A washer and dryer factory. When I was very young, it was a Norge factory. Norge was later bought out by Magic Chef, which was later bought out by Maytag. Amazingly, in these days of companies buying out other comapnies, eliminating some jobs and moving others overseas, the Herrin factory survived.

But now, that has changed. About six weeks ago, Maytag was bought out by Whirlpool. Today, Whirlpool announced that they are closing the Herrin facility.

I'm not sure if it's quite sunk in yet how devastating this will be on my hometown. A little math here (with some rough guesses)... There are 11,000 people in Herrin, lets say two thirds of those are people are of working age. That's about 7,500 people. Now, lets say half of the 1,000 employees that lost their job today live inside the Herrin city limits. That's 500. So that's about 6 or 7 percent of the working people in my hometown that lost their job, effective the end of 2006.

I'm ususally not big on economic boycotts, I think they're largely ineffective and I think that once corporations grow beyond a certain size, they're all going to be about equally evil anyway. I mean, I've seen Roger and Me, but if a Chevy were to be the best product out there next time I'm looking for a car, I'd probably buy a Chevy.

But someday, when I'm in the market for a refrigerator, washer or dryer, it's hard to see myself buying a Maytag or Whirlpool product. It's kind of petty, because I doubt their competitors are model citizens, but I just don't think I'd want to look at a Maytag or Whirlpool product in my house.

So, this news kind of put a damper on my day. Life will go on for Herrin, I suppose, but how many service jobs can one small town have? My heart also goes out to the people of Newton, Iowa and Searcy, Arkansas, two other communities that will be going through the same thing.