Uphill climb for Trump’s bid to revive US Rust Belt

The shuttered Westinghouse plant that looms over this western Pennsylvania town — a huge cathedral of brick and steel — used to build generators that supplied power to much of America.

Built after the end of World War II, the factory outside Pittsburgh in its heyday employed an army of 10,000 workers.

But during the 1980s, Westinghouse moved production to the sunbelt state of North Carolina, which offered greater flexibility in labor rules and facilities with more modern equipment.

Now there are about 1,200 workers in this gigantic space, employed in 40 or so small manufacturing businesses that are adapting to a more high-tech economy.

– A bygone way of life –
Such is life in America’s so-called Rust Belt — a strip of the northeastern and midwestern US — in this era of de-industrialization. The dormant yellow cranes inside this cavernous plant are a testament to a bygone way of life.

“Old manufacturing was very labor intensive and took lots of people,” said Timothy White of the Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania, the nonprofit group which acquired the property in 1989.

“New manufacturing is high-tech and takes less people but very skilled individuals,” White said.

The large assembly plants of yesteryear, once the economic mainstay in industrial areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania, were yanked up and moved elsewhere in the United States — or relocated outside the country altogether.

They have left behind vast empty vacant buildings like this massive factory with a central aisle as wide as a boulevard, and disenfranchised workers scrambling to reinvent themselves.

The 2016 presidential election on Tuesday speaks directly to these workers who pine for the economic stability of the past.

Donald Trump in particular has proclaimed that he will bring back industry that has ebbed away over the decades, even the jobs exported to Mexico and China.

The Republican nominee also has promised to reopen the coal mines, steel mills and factories, some of which have been closed for decades, by levying stiff penalties on companies that move jobs away.

That pledge has awakened hope in the hearts of his supporters in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, which form part of the industrial heartland of the United States.

The region has made some adaptations to account for globalization. Workers formerly employed in manufacturing have moved elsewhere or found jobs locally in the service sector.

Some have managed to find well-paid, skilled jobs after taking part in subsidized vocational retraining programs.

– ‘Re-engineering business’ –
“After the shock, the business sector re-engineers, spends a lot of money to adjust to the shock,” said John McLaren, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia.

“Even if the shock disappears down the road, you’ve permanently changed the production structure, and you’ve permanently changed the trade patterns,” he said.

That’s all the more reason, McLaren said, why Trump’s promise to restore the old way of life may be less attainable than some would like.

“It’s a little bit hard to imagine reconstructing that old way of doing things, especially since in the interim you’ve had the rise of China,” he said.

Some 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the south of the old Westinghouse facility, the story is much the same at another huge plant built by Chrysler in 1969.

The factory was bought by Volkswagen in 1976, which built its popular Rabbit line of cars there. It later sold the facility in 1988.

In 1990, Sony purchased it to build cathode ray television sets, providing jobs to 3,000 workers until it closed up shop in 2010.

Now, the site offers hundreds of thousands of square meters of factory space for rent, at bargain prices.

An envelope manufacturer fills part of the space. Another part is occupied by the Westmoreland County Community College’s Advanced Technology Center, for laid off workers and younger students.

The center offers many different programs, including a popular two-year course in welding — a skill applicable to a number of different industries, from energy to telecommunications.

– The end of ‘jobs for life’ –
One lamentable fact of this new American economy is that jobs for life appear to be a thing of the past.

In the plant once owned by Volkswagen, Gerry Lucia, 71, recounts with pride the work that he once did for the automaker.

“The dream from Volkswagen was that feeling that you would retire after 30 years and have a nice pension to live off of,” said Lucia, a mayor in the nearby town of Mount Pleasant, which has about 4,400 inhabitants.

“That dream vanished,” he said.

Lucia has little time for the campaign pledges of candidates who come through the region every four years and promise to fix what’s broken in the Rust Belt.

“They always say they’re going to bring the jobs back,” he said.

“If it was that easy, if they could make a profit, and could take care of their employees, the companies would have never left.”