Punching out

The good old days of prolific factory work in Kawartha Lakes were largely shuttered due to global forces

From the flour mills, sawmills, and woollen mills of the nineteenth century to the sprawling industrial complexes of the mid-twentieth century and beyond, factories have long provided steady jobs to local citizens. By the time Lindsay celebrated its 125^th birthday in 1982, the town could claim over 20 industries.

The jobs – many of which were unionized – were plentiful, and job security was all but assured. Until it wasn’t.

Over the span of less than a decade at the beginning of the current century, Lindsay lost three of its largest industrial employers representing more than 400 jobs: Viskase in 2000, Trent Rubber in 2005, and Fleetwood in 2007. Of those three, only Fleetwood’s sprawling facility on Highway 36 remains and has since become home to Brooklin Concrete Products. The enormous Trent Rubber and Viskase plants have long since been demolished – leaving behind a few scattered foundations, overgrown fields, and asphalt leading to nowhere.

What happened? How did three once-thriving factories close only within a few years of each other, and what was the impact of their closure on the town?

Viskase was the first to go. Founded in 1925 as Visking, the Chicago-based company specialized in plastic packaging products for the meat processing industry. Within a quarter of a century, the firm was a recognized leader in the field of cellulose casings for sausages. Lindsay, looking to build up its industrial sector after the Second World War, managed to attract the attention of Visking and a massive new factory opened for business on Colborne Street East in 1950. By the middle of that decade, Visking had become a public corporation and was recording sales of $58 million (U.S. dollars).

Union Carbide, a giant in the field of polyethylene film, acquired the Visking assets over the course of 1956 and 1957 and expansion continued unabated. In 1967, some 452 people were employed at the company’s Colborne Street complex. Six years later, that number rose to 500. Company newsletters of the period are replete with pictures of happy-looking employees attending Christmas parties, bowling games, and company-sponsored picnics.

In 1984, Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, suffered a gas leak that killed over 2,000 people and resulted in significant litigation. A year later, a gas leak at a Union Carbide-owned facility in West Virginia led to a $1.3 million fine. Faced with these problems, the company was soon forced to reorganize itself to reduce debt. Union Carbide’s ongoing financial difficulties in the mid-1980s, together with apparently declining margins on products manufactured in Lindsay, forced it to close down its film packaging plant on Colborne Street in 1989. Viskase (as Visking had been called since Envirodyne acquired the assets from Union Carbide in 1986) carried on with other operations at the Lindsay factory – but the halcyon days were clearly over.

Among other things, Union Carbide’s closure served to hasten the slow and steady decline of rail transportation to Lindsay. Carload traffic had declined along the Canadian National Railway’s Lindsay trackage over the years, with only 132 carloads of freight being shipped in 1989 (compared to 252 a year before). Moreover, track infrastructure in and around Lindsay was generally in poor shape, and the National Transportation Agency concluded in October of 1990, “that the revenue which would be generated by the estimated increase of 72 carloads would be insufficient to offset the actual losses incurred in the operation of this segment and the additional costs to maintain the branch line at current weight limits into the foreseeable future.” The town accused CN of denying proper service to local industries like Viskase, resulting in what it perceived to be an underutilized rail network – but the writing was on the wall, and CN removed its industrial trackage in Lindsay between 1990 and 1993.

In 1998, a few years after the tracks were taken up, nearly 30 positions at Viskase were cut as part of a global restructuring process. Corporate leadership assured the community that the impacts on personnel would be “fair.” This didn’t satisfy authorities in the Graphic Communications International Union, which represented Viskase employees, and it pushed to have more than two weeks’ severance pay for at least a portion of those being laid off. The final blow came not long after the Lindsay plant celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. A company called Bemis Incorporated acquired Viskase on July 7, 2000 and elected to shut down the operation on Colborne Street East. From a workforce of 400-500 people in the 1970s, Viskase had a mere 55 when it shut its doors for the last time in the fall of 2000.

Three kilometres southwest of Viskase, Trent Rubber’s vast operation at the corner of Mary and Albert Streets had been merrily humming along since 1969, when it took over the old Dominion Arsenal buildings that dated back to 1917. Specializing in rubber inner tubes for tires, the firm was acquired by parent company Polysar in 1974 before company employees assumed almost full ownership in 1978. In less than a decade, the company’s payroll had reached 150 people. 200,000 square feet of space, where 260 women had turned out munitions 70 years earlier, were now being used to manufacture rubber products – both inner tubes and a synthetic roof membrane.

Not only was Trent Rubber a success story insofar as it represented a clever reuse of a former factory site, it was also considered to be one of the country’s most progressive companies in terms of corporate structure and organization. So progressive, in fact, that its employees weren’t even unionized. As journalist Martin Dewey pointed out in the Feb. 11, 1980 edition of the The Globe & Mail, “the plant is a topsy-turvey place where textbook distinctions between capitalist and worker have been blurred beyond recognition.” Dewey’s readers discovered that “of the 132 men and women who work there, 85 per cent are part-owners of the operation, some of them convinced that they are pioneering a new kind of industrial democracy.” Karl Marx, Dewey remarked, “would have had an attack of vertigo within a mile of the place.”

Mr. Marx and his followers would indeed have looked kindly on how Trent Rubber operated. Of tthe company’s nine-person board, three members were elected from the factory floor. Company president David Hay proudly told the Globe & Mail that this arrangement led to increased productivity, and chairman of the board George Plummer optimistically added that, “I have no doubt that the next generation of capitalism will involve employee participation. If you want people to be responsible, you must give them ownership.” Profit-sharing had been one of Trent Rubber’s corporate values from its inception – along with a self-financed sick pay plan and promotion from within employee ranks.

Unlike Viskase, which was merely one of several branch plants ultimately owned by a large American industrial empire, Trent Rubber was, in its heyday, entirely locally owned. Said machinist Fred Coffey in an interview with Dewey, “Nobody can come and say they’re closing it down and moving it somewhere else. This is a Lindsay plant, owned and operated by Lindsay people.”

Trent Rubber filled an important niche in the automotive industry. Some seven tire manufacturers were operating in Canada by the late 1960s – but only four produced inner tubes, and the factory on Albert Street South supplied tubes to the remaining three. Alas, changes in automotive manufacturing by the turn of the 21st century would eventually catch up with Trent Rubber – notably, the fact that vehicles were increasingly being fitted with tubeless tires. Regardless of Trent Rubber’s undisputed reputation for quality products, the hard realities of supply and demand vis-à-vis rubber tubes were lurking in the background. Likewise – and despite Coffey’s pride in local ownership – it was also true that Trent Rubber could not exist without raw materials imported from the United States, and that it was subject to forces affecting all aspects of the international rubber industry.

In 1990, Trent Rubber was sold to Toronto’s Viceroy Rubber and Plastics Ltd., and employees were asked to take a 10 per cent reduction in wages. Financial problems plagued the firm for another decade, and when the company became insolvent and closed for good in July of 2005, speculation swirled in the local press about whether fluctuating global oil prices (oil being a key ingredient in the manufacture of rubber products), and a low Canadian dollar might have undermined its bottom line. Longtime employees were unceremoniously given their pink slips by upper management, and those being let go felt that they had been excluded from the communication loop. It was a far cry from the good old days, when workers were kept informed about changes.

Trent Rubber’s demise was a tough pill to swallow for the town of Lindsay, which was still reeling from the closure of Viskase five years earlier. (Ironically, the front page of the Lindsay Daily Post on July 12, 2000 announced that Trent Rubber was on the verge creating up to 100 new jobs, while an adjacent headline announced that Viskase would be closing its doors.)

Back in Lindsay’s east ward industrial park, Viskase acquired a new neighbour when Fleetwood Canada set up shop almost around the corner in 1973. Founded in California in 1950 as Coach Specialties Company and rechristened as Fleetwood Enterprises in 1957, the company joined the Fortune 500 list in the same year it opened its Lindsay plant. Located in a vast production facility on Mount Hope Street, the company eventually expanded into a 78,000 square-foot space on Highway 36. By 1992, Fleetwood employed 235 people and was making 2,500 to 3,500trailers of various types and sizes per year.

As with Viskase and other large, American-owned entities, a slew of corporate changes came together to create a perfect storm that ultimately put Fleetwood’s Lindsay plant out of business. By the time the new millennium rolled around, Fleetwood’s trailer division was losing its competitive advantage. Soaring gasoline prices, a low Canadian dollar, excess inventory, and even weather were all cited as reasons for downsizing in 2004, when 48 Fleetwood employees were sent packing.

By the spring of 2007, Fleetwood had consolidated its two Lindsay plants, leading to more layoffs. On July 25, the trailer-maker shut down its Canadian operations entirely. More than 300 people lost their jobs – and they weren’t the only ones. Lippert Components, a Lindsay business responsible for supplying Fleetwood with chassis, was directly affected by the closure and laid off 20 workers. Despite the efforts of then-Member of Parliament Barry Devolin to facilitate discussions between Fleetwood and Unite Here Canada – the union representing Fleetwood workers – about keeping the plant open, the deed was done. No more Lindsay-made trailers would be rolling into the country’s campgrounds.

Decisions made at faraway head offices, the loss of critical infrastructure (i.e. railways), and the economy’s ever-shifting winds all conspired to close three of Lindsay’s largest factories in the early 21^st century – in spite of interventions from unions representing Fleetwood and Viskase workers, and in spite of the unique relationship Trent Rubber employees had with their once-benevolent employer.

Fortunately for Lindsay, their closure did not spell an end to large-scale manufacturing in the community and today Armada, Cameron Steel, Holsag, Mariposa Dairy, Northern Casket, Pickseed, TS Manufacturing, among others, provide employment to several hundred people.

Still, the $64 question among those who remember the closure of Viskase, Trent Rubber, and Fleetwood is: could it happen again? “There are a number of factors that can contribute to a business’s decision to close, whether it’s independent operational decisions or external factors that impact their business,” says Lindsey Schoenmakers, the City’s economic development officer responsible for business development. “Through the relationships that we’ve developed with our local manufacturing facilities, we work to understand what the major hurdles are in each industry, which helps us tailor our programming to support them,” Schoenmakers adds.

Today, the City’s Economic Development department has a number of tools, many unheard of 15-20 years ago, to support the sustainability of manufacturers, attract new investment into local communities, and support businesses throughout their lifecycle. These include enabling local businesses to upgrade technology and infrastructure through provincial and federal funding; supporting businesses to attract, retain, and upskill their workforce through the Pathways to Prosperity and Community Concierge programs; and helping businesses looking to invest or expand in Kawartha Lakes navigate the development aspects of their projects with the newly launched Development Concierge Program.

Schoenmakers is optimistic about the future. “Recently, we’ve seen the expansion of many advanced manufacturing facilities in our community, including TS Manufacturing’s recently obtained funding to expand their facilities, the new distribution centre for Kawartha Dairy, as well as Brooklin Concrete’s new investment and relocation to Lindsay,” she says. “Economic Development programming always adapts to meet the demands of our local industry, while maintaining key principles of business retention, expansion and investment attraction.”