by Neil Caudle

The plant closed, and Carol Crabtree lost more than a job. What can be done to recover the value of people who know how to work?

hen Carol Crabtree cut cloth for children’s dresses, she thought of the little girls who would wear them. It was more than a job. The women who worked with her at the Peaches ‘N Cream plant in Mebane were as close as family. When her house burned down and she lost everything, they took care of her.

And the company itself—the family-owned May Apparel Group—treated its employees with respect, as though they were partners, Crabtree says. Many times, to stay on schedule, Crabtree and her coworkers voluntarily worked late into the night and on weekends, just to make sure the clothing samples were ready on time.

But in May, after 18 years with the company, Crabtree worked her last shift at Peaches ‘N Cream. Her division had closed. While the company would retain a small base in North Carolina, the manufacturing was moving to Mexico. The Mebane plant—where the tools had been scissors and yardsticks, not the computer-driven machines of modern apparel factories—was no longer able to compete. The bad news came last fall.

“We cried from October to May,” Crabtree says.

cross North Carolina, factories in the state’s traditional industries are closing their doors, and many thousands of workers like Carol Crabtree are losing their jobs.

“A lot of the state’s mass-production, mass-market jobs are going to Asia or Mexico,” says Mike Luger, professor of public policy analysis and director of Carolina’s Office of Economic Development. “Some things can still be produced here, but for workers, the skills required are much different. Emerging industries are using computer-aided equipment.”

Some of the best manufacturing jobs are in industries that aren’t yet synonymous with North Carolina—metalworking, plastics, and telecommunications, for instance. Even traditional money-makers, such as agriculture, are evolving high-tech systems for producing and distributing their products.

In each of the new “emerging” industries, the common denominator is technology, Luger says. While there are still some good jobs that don’t involve computers, they are few and far between. For workers over 40—people who didn’t grow up with their fingers on a keyboard—making the jump to computers can be daunting. As Crabtree puts it: “It’s hard to go from a job where you’re doing good, physical work to one where you sit in front of a screen punching keys every day.”

Statewide in North Carolina, many thousands of workers find themselves facing the same hard choices.

“A lot of the workers being displaced have invested many years in their careers,” Luger says. “Getting them back into training is difficult. The older people are, the harder it becomes to change hats and learn a new set of skills. Many have children who are in high school, with friends and activities. These workers usually don’t feel free to stop working and go back to school, even if they know that’s their only hope for finding a job with a future. It’s a risk, and the system doesn’t compensate them for taking that risk. So a lot of workers are forced to take lower-paying jobs just to pay the bills.”

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