Auto Workers Coming Home  
 “I come from down in the valley, where mister when your young.
They bring you up to do, what your daddy done.”
-Bruce Springsteen (The River)

My parents generation were the last  to see a multitude of  high paying factory jobs.  My childhood neighbors worked on assembly lines and made good money.
Some of their children are doing the same thing
I worry about  factory workers  my age.  In the unlikely event they make to retirement without a layoff, they won’t get the pension plans their parents received and probably won’t have lifetime health insurance.
The game is changing but I don’t think my former neighbors realize  it.   They may have to change their lives radically.  They need to start making plans but it will not happen  until their current jobs are terminated.
When Ford Motors announced this week that they were going to eliminate up to 30,000 jobs and 14 factories, it meant that  the three big American car companies had eliminated or announced plans to eliminate 140,000 jobs since the year 2000.
Those  weren’t minimum wage jobs.  The jobs were the pick of the litter for blue collar employment.  Automobile manufacturers offer high wages and good benefits.  They  attract the  best working class employees.
Though they may be good workers, there is no future for them at the American automotive plants.   The plants in big cities are being closed one by one.
It is time for those workers to think about moving to small towns.
The exodus used to be from Appalachia to bigger cities.  Songs like Bobby Bare’s “Detroit City” chronicled the loneliness of small town workers who came to big cities to get a good job.
Those people move to big cities out of economic necessity.  Many have spent their lives  in places like Detroit  but long for the sense of family and  belonging that small communities  offer.
Some of my friends and family moved to Detroit over  40 years ago.  Despite all the years in Michigan, they still consider themselves Kentuckians and Kentucky is the place that they call home.
It is  time for them to return to their roots.  It is also the time for small communities to roll out the welcome mat and encourage them.
The people leaving the auto industry have a lot to offer.  They were making good money  and hopefully saved some of it.  The pensions and benefits they accumulated would be better than their small town neighbors, although the auto workers have the fear of losing those benefits in the future.   With a   lower cost of living,  the displaced auto workers would be upper middle class citizens  in  any small town.
They would have skills that could boost small town economies.  
Many government entities use tax breaks and economic incentives to attract big companies to a community.
Instead of putting the focus on recruiting big corporations, who may shut down  and move to Mexico, a better use of money would be to recruit a trained and willing work force.
Like people being laid off from automotive plants.
 With a well trained workforce available, small and mid size employers might be interested in locating in small towns.
It is the opposite of   economic development officers think  but it could work.
It has been tried in a less formal manner. Media icon Al Smith told me recently that a bunch of unemployed steel workers moved to London, Kentucky in the early 1980’s to find work.  They called themselves the “over the hill gang” and collected their pensions while they did other work in town.

The city officials in London did not recruit them but benefited from having them.

It’s time for other small towns to do the same.  It is a win-win situation for all. 

The changes in the world economy are making it impossible for someone to be brought up in big cities to do what their daddy did. 

In a progressive small town, the children of displaced auto workers might find opportunity and growth.  

Don McNay is President of McNay Settlement Group, a company providing economic opportunity in small town Richmond, Kentucky.  His award winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service.  He is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.  You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com