Looking at Owens Corning in 2009. This Used to Be a Place to Get a Job
On a geocashing excursion today with The H Man, we stopped to overlook the Owens Corning Plant in Newark, Ohio. I actually looked at the plant with a little bit of disgust. I thought about all the people that had worked there making a good living, but now it’s just a handful. They take advantage of some folks with temp service types of deals. The area around the plant is pretty much as much of a slum as you would expect in this semi-rural area. I noticed a burnt out house with no efforts being taken to rebuild, it was just abandoned.
After reading the history of the plant, the story with Owens-Corning isn’t as bad as it would seem looking at the place today. At one time this place served a vital function in the technological advances, energy savings, and even the country’s naval warfare capabilities. It is so ironic to find out they truly were on the leading edge of the “green” movement, from way back in the 1930′s. They were doing their best with what they understood at the time, without knowing what mess they were creating and how many lives they were effecting with their pollutants. I would estimate that overall, they helped much more than they hurt, and the company has made huge efforts to be as clean as possible now. The were hardly wreckless or irresponsible when you look at what they were trying to accomplish with the knowledge they had. Owens-Corning made many people wealthy for a LONG time too. You can’t really blame them for not being able to keep it going forever.
Owens-Corning and other leading edge companies had the type of innovators that the country needs now. Instead, the corporations are pulling greedy financial stunts, producing poor outdated products, and wondering what’s wrong with the system. The rest of us that should be supporting companies with the new world changing technologies are powerless to help them. We let our government fund crackpot “green” companies and the politicians retire on yachts with the kickbacks. To calm us all down, they tell us that manufacturing is no longer our forte’ and that we should all concentrate on the service sector. Meanwhile, any innovation is being squashed. The old tech companies want no mention of them because that could destroy their Chinese and Vietnamese operations. They can make crap while still relying on the good name their employees of the past created for them.
So while we are out looking for jobs in this great “service” sector, we can take some unemployed days off to gaze at the last plumes of smoke belching out of the once great companies of the past. We can watch the last American jalopies lumbering off the assembly lines, the last jumbo jets gracefully edging out of their hangers, the last Peterbilts coming out for the short hauls in place of the usual coast-to-coast runs, and the lasts of many other great American industrial innovations as they fade away. We can take our place as busboys, waiters, lawncare technicians, and handymen out in this great service sector world.
Maybe we need to forget all this “service sector” talk and get back to making real products again. Maybe this economic downturn will wake some people up. It would certainly brighten up the skies over Owens-Corning if we did.
