Columbus is a place with affordable homes, newly renovated schools and very little crime. It has a small-town, rural Midwestern feel but has always been expanding enough to be vital and robust. Layoffs aside, there is very little turnover in the work force at the plants here — and a major reason is that people like their jobs and like their town.
“This is a community,” says Mr. Salak, “with a lot of down-to-earth people.”
“They offered me the job, but at $8 an hour,” she says, a little exasperated. That’s about what she earns from unemployment checks. And by her calculations, given her expenses — which include raising five children — it isn’t enough. She told the hotel that she would consider $9 an hour. The hotel said no.
As for his own savings, well, he is running low on dimes: “I’m approaching mac-and-cheese broke, as Jeff Foxworthy would say.”
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COLUMBUS, a city of 21,000, has the highest per-capita rate of manufacturing employment of any place in Nebraska. It produces car seats, burger patties, ethanol, bug traps, dog kennels, grain tubs — the list goes on. A handful of Fortune 500 companies have a presence here.
“I think of it as the most anti-union town on the planet,” says Ken Mass, the president of the Nebraska A.F.L.-C.I.O. “Back in the late ’70s, early ’80s, the Machinists International Union went there, handbilling, getting their name out. A patrolman just told them to leave.”
A sign about 17 miles outside of town says “Columbus Is Open for Business,” and the more time you spend here, the more literal those words sound.
ONE of the first places with a recession tremor was the Behlen Manufacturing Company, which makes dozens of farm products, as well as one-story steel buildings. By January of this year, orders for the building segment of the business had all but dried up. |
clipped from www.nytimes.com
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