Northeastern Pennsylvania Textiles:
And then there was none
By Leo Lubinsky
Above: Abandoned
textile mill
Photo by Leo
Lubinsky
After the coal jobs disappeared in the “Coal Region” of Pennsylvania, textiles filled much of the void. I can remember looking from my first grade classroom window, across the valley, to the coat factory where my mother worked. For the next 44 years my life and fortunes would be tied to the local textile mills and factories. This is my story of the local textile industry and its ultimate demise.
When I entered first grade in 1962 every little town in the
county had one or more shirt, blouse, or coat factory. Many towns had knitting mills or dye houses,
as well. Anyone needing a job could find one in the
local textile trade. Many mothers, like
my own, worked while their kids were in school.
When my older brother needed a job; he got one in the same factory my
where my mother had worked. My father
worked in a small town a few miles away.
He was an electrician in a bleach and dye house.
When I graduated from high school in 1974 my last choice for
a job was the textile trade. I worked
several jobs through the 70’s as the economy spiraled down. I had a little house and a little family by
1981 and my job outside textiles had no benefits. When my father told me the company he worked
for was hiring, I gave in, and applied.
It was a third generation family business that had no problem hiring
relatives of current employees; in fact, they preferred to do so. The man who hired me said “you will never get
rich here but we have great benefits for your family”, and so; I started a
career in textiles.
I was a knitter, a dye tub operator, ran wet processing
machines, and dryers. By the late 80’s I
was promoted to supervisor and soon after to human resources assistant
manager. I was not rich but I could walk
to work and my family did have great benefits, fully paid. By 1990 I was an
operations manager in bleaching and finishing and still with the same family
business that was founded in 1909. Business
had its ups and downs, but usually; the ups meant overtime for the hourly
workers and the downs meant only 40 hours a week.
The challenges to the business were many in the early 90’s;
in a non-union company we frequently had one union or another campaigning to
represent the employees, increasing regulations, and increasing energy and raw
material cost to name a few. These pressures
slowly sent the profits lower but the largest obstacle was being created by the
U.S. government in the form of a trade agreement.
The weather was seasonably cold with a light wind on January
1st, 1994 but the headwinds started howling against the textile
industry in the U.S. that day as The North American Free Trade Agreement took
effect. Due to NAFTA, over the next
decade, almost one million textiles jobs would disappear, including my own*.
As importing textiles became cheaper and more and more
connections were made between the importers and the retailers, business became
tighter. Through 1994 and 1995 most
American textiles manufacturers were adversely impacted. It was an unusual negative event late in 1995
that gave my employer a temporary respite from the hard times; a fire.
A massive fire at the Malden Mills complex on December 11th,
1995 would give us the momentum we needed to keep going into the new
century. Because of the loss of Malden
Mill’s ability to finish their own product they contracted out large scale
production to our mill. Even so, late in
2000 the family business, my employer, that had started in 1909 closed
forever. In 2015, on the eve of the 20th
anniversary of the great fire, Malden Mills factories in Lawrence Massachusetts
announced their closing with the owners citing “global marketing pressures”.
A drive through the county today reveals a rare few
factories or mills producing textiles.
Most of the idled buildings have been repurposed or demolished to become
parking lots. Like many others I left
the county to find a good job; and today, a new high school graduate has a
harder time finding any job in the county. When the first job is found it is
often in fast food or in a warehouse and probably not in the employee’s home
town so he/she better have a car. The
textile business is now a thing of the past in our county and the county’s future
appears nearly as dark as the abandoned coal mines.
