Ford plant closing symbolic of loss of manufacturing jobs

EDISON, N.J. (AP) —When the Ford Motor plant closes its assembly line Thursday, it will continue the steady departure of manufacturing jobs from New Jersey, particularly in the auto industry.

New Jersey's auto industry once included plants in Mahwah and Edgewater and had more than 14,000 workers in 1970.

After the closing of the Ford plant, that number will drop down to little more than 1,000. General Motors, which operates the state's lone remaining auto plant in Linden, said last week it will lay off 350 of the factory's 1,350 employees.

In all manufacturing, New Jersey has lost 241,000 jobs, or about 40 percent, since 1990.

"We are turning a chapter," Edison Mayor George Spadaro told The Sunday Star-Ledger of Newark. "We're closing the chapter of an age where manufacturing was the major component of our local economy. And we are emerging at a chapter where the service industry has become a primary factor."

Citing declining sales in the compact truck market, Ford announced the closing of the Edison plant and four others at the beginning of 2002. Most of the Edison plant's 845 workers will leave for the last time Thursday.

"It's heartbreaking that the plant's closing," said Jim Shaw, president of Local 980 of the United Auto Workers union. "The jobs that are paying the kind of wages here are few and far between. And the manufacturing base in New Jersey is leaving." The plant, which opened in 1948, is scheduled to be vacant by the end of the year. Township officials hope to develop the site as a retail and indoor recreation complex.

Workers who are laid off will have several options, including moving to another Ford plant or retiring, if they have worked enough years. Or, they can draw unemployment for 40 weeks plus a company subsidy that will raise their income to 95 percent of their former salary.

When the 40 weeks expires, workers can draw a full salary through 2007 for reporting to a work center daily to do volunteer or charity work.

"It's still an industry that I believe in and I really do enjoy it," said Louis Nastasio, 42, of Helmetta in Middlesex County, who has worked for Ford since the early 1990s. "I'm not going to be able to find anything within that same pay rate. It's going to be a little tough to try and match what I am doing now."