High Tech Turns Sour; Layoffs Hit Communities Buoyed by Boom
The 2,500 layoffs that ended in July at the Motorola cell phone manufacturing plant are still fresh in the minds of residents of this town of 8,000 just south of the Wisconsin border.</br></br>Motorola Inc. factory had been here just five years and employed some 5,000 workers. Restaurants like Nick's Cozy Nook -- where daily soup-to-dessert specials cost $4.95 -- filled up with Motorola workers during breakfast and dinner breaks.</br></br>"We had so many good years in a row. Everyone knew [a downturn] was coming, but we really were not ready when it got here," he said. "There were a lot of couples who had just bought a house, or couples that had just got married or had children."</br></br>With the latest figures showing an unexpected surge in the nation's unemployment rate to 4.9 percent, there is anxiety throughout the American heartland that the good times are indeed coming to an end. The downturn goes beyond stock market losses and the dot-com crash, worrying manufacturing workers across the country.</br></br>"It's a very nervous feeling out there these days," said Margaret Blackshere, president of the Illinois State Federation of the AFL- CIO. "The security of the industrial sector is long gone. Even with the boom in the building sector, they are all nervous. They're wondering, 'Can we plan?' and 'Am I going to have a job next week?' "