Ex-workers at Nabisco plant struggle year after layoffs
CHICAGO — Susana Palomo couldn’t sleep for a week, torn between a dream and reality.
One of the hundreds of workers laid off last year from a Nabisco plant on Chicago’s Southwest Side, where Oreos were made for more than six decades, Palomo had embarked on a bold plan to attend college and perhaps open her own small bakery someday. But Mondelez International, the $30 billion global parent company of Nabisco, called her back to work in December.
Palomo’s dilemma: Return to the factory job and get paid? Or continue studying at the French Pastry School, where she was thriving?
“I know money is really important in life, but other things also. If you’re not happy, money’s not everything. … It’s a struggle,” said Palomo, a woman in her 50s who emigrated from Mexico with her family as a teenager.
It’s been nearly a year since Mondelez laid off almost half of its 1,200 manufacturing workers in Chicago, shifting the work to Mexico. More than 100 employees have been called back, but many of those who lost their jobs struggle to stay afloat financially.
The layoffs, continuing the trend of American companies exporting jobs to take advantage of cheaper materials and labor costs, prompted both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to lambaste Mondelez’s decision from the campaign trail. Since taking office, Trump has repeatedly pledged to restore U.S. manufacturing jobs lost to other countries.
But it’s hard to envision a meaningful reversal of the manufacturing decline in Chicago, where $25-an-hour factory jobs with benefits have become increasingly rare. In the late 1940s, Chicago boasted almost 670,000 manufacturing jobs, according to city data. Recent estimates by university researchers put the current number at closer to 70,000.
Jobs at the Nabisco bakery, which employed more than 4,000 workers in its heyday, generally paid more than most of the other jobs in the surrounding area, and the plant employed more black and Hispanic workers than other facilities in the area, according to a recent analysis by the Great Cities Institute at University of Illinois Chicago.
“These are important, goodpaying jobs, and not necessarily for people with high levels of educational attainment, in a part of the city that’s been losing manufacturing jobs for decades,” said Matt Wilson, economic development planner for the Great Cities Institute.
Since the 600 job cuts were announced in July 2015, 429 workers have received layoff notices, said Mondelez spokesman Laurie Guzzinati. Retirements and attrition helped offset some layoffs.
Of those 429, 120 have returned to the facility after being called back to work and there could be additional callbacks, Guzzinati said. More could be called back depending on operational needs, she said.
After Anthony Jackson was laid off in March, his apartment stayed dark for almost a month because he couldn’t pay the electric bill. He fell behind on child support payments for his three daughters. He had to make a hardship withdrawal from his 401(k).
“Originally, it was harsh. It was extremely harsh,” said Jackson, 40, a Navy veteran who worked about five years at the plant.
His fortunes improved when he became a paid advocate for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, by far the largest union at the plant.
Since June, Jackson said, he’s spoken to college students and labor groups in 19 states, promoting the union’s boycott of Mexican-made Nabisco products and calling for the “repatriation of American jobs.”
Jackson wouldn’t say how much the union pays him, although he said it’s considerably less than the $26 an hour he made at Mondelez. But he believes in the cause and takes satisfaction in the work.
“I live in a bad neighborhood. I see the unemployment here. … I think it’s incumbent for me and my family and those around me to fight to try to change that,” Jackson said.
Michael Smith also joined the baker union’s fight. Smith, 59, had hoped to retire from the Mondelez plant, but has found a new calling as a voice of the union after he was laid off in March.
Unafraid of public speaking, Smith recently delivered a speech to some 3,500 members of the American Postal Workers Union in Florida.
Like Jackson, Smith speaks passionately about what he considers to be the injustice of a company moving American jobs to Mexico and selling products back to American consumers in order to increase profits for shareholders.