Factory’s departure upends Indiana town
Steelworkers’ lives changed forever when Rexnord Corp. closed its Indianapolis bearings plant
TINDIANAPOLIS he man from Mexico followed a manager through the factory floor, past whirring exhaust fans, beeping forklifts, and drilling machines that whined against steel. Workers in safety glasses looked up and stared. Others looked away. Shannon Mulcahy felt her stomach lurch.
It was December 2016. Rexnord Corp.’s factory still churned out bearings as it always had.
The bearings it made — modern-day equivalents of a gadget designed by Leonardo da Vinci — were packed into crates like enormous Christmas ornaments and shipped around the world. To digging machines that claw the earth. To wheat combines that spin in the fields. To elevators and escalators in the cities.
When Shannon Mulcahy first started working at the plant, at age 25, her only goal was to break free of a boyfriend who beat her. Back then, her frosted blond hair and hourglass figure turned heads on the factory floor. Now, at 43, men more often remarked on her broad shoulders, which can lift a 75-pound tray of steel. Or her hands, stained with oil.
Being a female steelworker hadn’t been easy. But she’d learned to hold her own.
Men had come and gone. Houses had been bought and lost. But the job had always been there. For 17 years. Until now.
Shannon and her co-workers had gotten the news back in October: The factory was closing. Ball bearings would move to a new plant in Monterrey, Mexico. Roller bearings would go to McAllen, Texas. About 300 workers would lose their jobs.
The bosses called it “a business decision.” To Shannon, it felt like a backhand across the face. Shannon cried that night. And the next night. And the next.
Then, that Monday, Shannon did the only thing she knew how. She put on her electric-blue eyeliner and went back to work.
For months, Shannon kept working as the factory shut down around her. She struggled with straightforward questions: Should she train workers from Mexico for extra pay or refuse? Should she go back to school or find a new job, no matter what it paid?
The 410,000-square-foot bearings plant, with its blue and gray tinted windows and flagpole out front, had been built by a company called LinkBelt in 1959, halcyon days for American manufacturing.
Link-Belt meant to bearings what Cadillac meant to cars. “Symbol of quality” was its motto. Even after a series of sales and mergers in the 1980s left the factory in the hands of Rexnord, a Milwaukee-based rival, the Link-Belt brand lived on, stamped into the housings of new bearings.
But over the years, cheaper bearings from overseas eroded profits. To stay profitable, the factory replaced some workers with machines and outsourced some components. Then Rexnord’s chief executive announced the plan to send jobs to Mexico, which he said would reduce costs by $30 million and produce higher returns for investors. Union representatives drew up a list of concessions in a bid to save the plant. But no concession could change the math. In Indiana, workers earned an average of $25 an hour, plus benefits. In Monterrey, they earned less than $6 an hour.
Shannon’s mentor at the plant was Stan Settles, who had worked at the factory for nearly half a century and knew everything about a forestgreen heat-induction machine stamped with the word “DANGER” on its side. Its nickname was the “Tocco,” after The Ohio Crankshaft Co. that created it.
Stan showed Shannon how to bolt the right size coil to the Tocco’s cabinet and make it heat up like a car cigarette lighter. He showed her how to make the machine spin the steel rings inside the hot coil for just the right amount of time.
At the Rexnord factory, the first trainees arrived around Christmastime.
She wanted to make sure the Tocco’s new operators cared for it properly: “It just gives me a little bit of closure with the Tocco. I know it sounds crazy. I feel like it’s mine.”
Winter bloomed into spring. The plant was hollowed out, piece by piece. The emptiness in the factory grew. Shannon and her co-workers still talked about how to save the factory.
But reality became harder to ignore when two men from Mexico arrived to learn about the Tocco. The younger one, a maintenance worker named Tadeo, exuded excitement that clashed with the sullen stares he got from American workers in the plant. The older one, a process engineer named Ricardo Valdez, was handsome, carried himself with confidence and liked to crack jokes.
Shannon felt closer to the younger trainee, Tadeo. He was 23, the same age as her son. Shannon called him “Tad” or “Kid.” Just as Stan Settles had passed on his knowledge to Shannon, Shannon trained Tad as if he were one of her own.
Before he returned to Mexico, Tad pulled Shannon aside. He put his hand over his heart. “My friend tells me that the reason a lot of people don’t like us is because we’re taking their jobs,” he said, sounding distraught.
“I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I’m happy that you get the opportunity to make some money. I was blessed for a while. I hate to see it go. Now it’s your turn to be blessed.”