When you lie down with dogs ...

I was going to write something scathing about the feckless cowards in the Senate that caved in on the CR to end the shutdown, but that has been beaten. Those fucking fuckers. Sigh, the deed is done, and the one ray of sunshine is that regardless of how this all turns out, when the ACA supplemental assistance leads 24 million Americans to experience the full fuckery of the Republican, strike that, MAGA effects, they might begin to realize that MAGA isn't on their side.

Small consolation. But it is what it is, the deed is done. Now, on to the main event.

I (ok we, my wife and I) subscribe to the digital version of the NY Times. I know a LOT of people have cancelled their subs in disgust, but the truth is, they are one of the few American outlets that still do long form, and in field reporting. This is something that is needed, so I hold my nose over many of their editorial shit-takes, and read thei reporting.[1]

One of the features I usually read is their Sunday edition "Great Reads". These are articles that are longer, and are reported in depth. That takes a) great journalists, and b) a lot of sleuthing. This week's Great Read is : "A MAGA Senator Promised Hope for a Dying Ohio Mill. Then Reality Set In." (Gift link)

You can probably guess who this is referring to. Ohio, and in the last election long-time Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown, a stalwart supporter of unions and labor was barely ousted by über MAGA Bernie Moreno.

Up front, I would highly recommend clicking on that link and reading the article. It isn't too long, but it represents how the MAGA message was tilted to appeal to organized labor, how they fell for it, and their despair.

The TL;DR is: MAGA candidate comes in and whispers sweet nothings to the remnants of the unionized labor movement in what was once the most unionized state, Ohio, and then the promises fell down. Lots of disappointment and the hail mary diving catch is going to not resurrect these jobs.

Let's dive in:

The tale of a mill in decline

This is a story that was originally drafted at the beginning of the Reagan administration(s), the decline of industry, being moved first off-shore to save on labor, and then with the increased adoption of automation. Placess like this paper mill remained, but its owners chose to starve it of investment in both modernization, or even basic maintenance.

It has been on a rocky ride since the 1980's, a slow decline to oblivion, until just 850 souls still punched the clock in April of 2025, about 4 months after the election of both Trump, and Senator Moreno. Trump made a lot of progress in gaining support from organized labor, who astonishingly believed that Trump gave a single iota of a damn for them. Sure, there was some rhetorical pablum that oozed out of Trump's face-anus that sounded good to these bolidly blue collar workers.

But, like most of those odoroous emanations from that front-butt, it was all lies.

In April, the plant's owner, H.I.G. a private equity firm realized that it was a hopeless cause, and decided to shut it down, fire all the remaining workers, and let it go.

This is where the fun begins. MAGA Moreno intervenes, and supposedly got them to keep the plant open more than the original 60 days of grace to allow time to find a 'buyer' who would then keep the concern operating.

And of course, the suckers bought it. Their hopes being buoyed by:

The newly elected senator Bernie Moreno told the crowd that he’d just received a phone call from a top executive at the private equity firm promising that the facility would remain open until the end of the year, giving it more time to find a new owner.

The mill’s rescue was not assured, Mr. Moreno and the other politicians cautioned. But it was hard to find anyone in the crowd not buoyed by what Mr. Moreno called “a day of hope.”

"Day of Hope", yeah, that's a good description.

Regardless, when you are trying to hawk an obsolete paper mill that has been neglected for decades (the rise of IT and computers/automation in office work decimated the market for the carbonless paper that this mill specialized in. That demand ain't coming back) that has equipment that is worn out and useless in the modern world, any buyer would be forced to invest literally hundreds of millions of dollars to refit, and bring up to snuff this factory.

And that was always not even a diving catch.

Still, Moreno at least strong-armed the moneymen at the Private Equity (PE) firm that owned it. Yet, there were cautious disclaimers like the one in that second paragraph quoted above.

But that was enough to raise the hopes of the workers. Workers who by and large had worked their entire lives at the mill, often joining right out of high school. It paid fairly well ($25 an hour wages minimum, and plenty of overtime got many workers into 6 figures) especially for where they are located.

But all things must come to an end, and for dinosaur operations, specializing in manufacturing goods that are just no longer needed are inevitably going to be shuttered.

Sweaty's axiom: If something sounds too good to be true, look behind the curtain...

Upon this seemingly miraculous save by Moreno browbeating the PE managers, it uplifted a lot of the workers:

“It was amazing,” said Jeff Allen, the president of the union local and a third-generation papermaker, who also addressed the crowd this April. “I’m sitting there with the governor, two sitting U.S. senators, the district congressman, all the state officials — my votes didn’t put any of them in office. Historically, this union supported Democrats. And yet here are all these Republicans supporting us.”

This could be a new paradigm, he thought.

Donald J. Trump’s promise to revive manufacturing in the United States had appealed to working class voters around the country last November, including many of Mr. Allen’s co-workers. Now, here was Mr. Moreno, a Make America Great Again standard-bearer, forcefully pounding the table for union jobs.

Hmmm, "new paradigm". Wonder how that went for them...

Alas, this didn't come out of nowhere. The fate of the once thriving paper industry in the US has had a familiar arc:

In the paper industry, private equity has often followed a familiar playbook: Buy a distressed asset on the cheap and load it with debt, some of which is used to pay the private equity firm. Then, in a few years, the private equity firm sells the company or declares bankruptcy.

As the mill changed hands over the years, it was rarely good for the rank and file.

Interviews with more than two dozen current and former employees describe the last 25 years as a period of underinvestment, poor management and declining morale. There have been more than a dozen mill managers in the last two decades. Maintenance and engineering departments withered, and in late 2022, about 90 veteran millworkers retired suddenly, creating a knowledge deficit that further crippled the operation.

Words like "underinvestment", "poor management", and "declining morale" are a tapestry of red flags that should have been blaring to the workers remaining in the community to make plans to move on and to something else.

Warnings that were not heeded, or just missed. It is scary to have what was once a generational safe avocation evaporate and the desire to pretend it isn't happening is great.[2]

Hence, their desires to pretend that Bernie Moreno would come through for them. I mean, he was a successful business man before he won his Senate seat (he owned a chain of auto showrooms), right?

Of course, you don't need me to tell you that the extension to the end of the year was bullshit, that indeed they laid off the staff (all except for a skeleton crew to keep the place from falling into itself) by the first of August, and the PE firm didn't have a new buyer.

Promises made, Promises broken. That should be on a Red Hat somewhere...

The great savior of labor that swayed the voters of Ohio to turf out Sherrod Brown quickly changes his tune:

Mr. Moreno returned to Chillicothe again on the first Saturday in June — not for a rally, but to deliver grim news to the union’s leadership: H.I.G. Capital would be closing the mill on Aug. 10, not at the end of the year, as the private equity firm had promised him.

Mr. Moreno said he had come to understand H.I.G. Capital’s plight. The mill had been hemorrhaging customers (and employees) since it announced the closing, and it was costing the firm millions to keep it open even for a few more months.

“I’m a business guy,” Mr. Moreno said. “I understood that they were on a path that couldn’t be reversed. You realize it’s a monumental amount of money they would have to invest to turn it around.”

Gee, what a fucking surprise. None of this was unknown in April.

Anyhow, it looks like there's a buyer, but instead odf paper, its going to be refitted to making latex gloves for hospitals. A much more automated process. But so far, only 71 people work there. And there's no commitment to hiring any number of workers.

And the real rub? Not a union shop. Those $25/hour stareting jobs with benefits and protections are gone, likely to never return.

Anyhow, stupid hurts, and I know that I get tired of writing that people are voting against their own interests, but there it is. I guess that the 2 Trans athletes in high school sports was more important that having a life-long defender of labor in the capitol on your side (to be honest, I doubt that Sherrod Brown could have halted this).

Oh well.

There's some deeper dives into a couple of the people who were screwed, and how difficult it is for them to attend job fairs, and how any job they are likely to be able to find will pay way less than their union scale jobs at the mill.

That's all for this one, do read the full story.

1 - I so want to subscribe to the Financial Times of Britain, but their digital sub is like $500 a year. Alas, the cost of doing real reporting is a LOT. One day I will close my eyes and buy it.

2 - The tech workers today would be wise to learn from this example. Their livelihoods are being stripped away by AI and greedy fucking management/executives, and your perches are built on a sandbar in a hurricane, doomed to be swept away. Make plans now!