Upstate New York |
ILION
People are talking. And in the shadows of the Remington Arms plant, Daniel Stracquadaine of Dr. Dan’s Tattooing welcomes their comments — employee and resident alike. “I heard from three, four different people they’re going to only keep 70 people there, just for assembly,” Stracquadaine said of the factory. The rumors are flying, as they would in any small town where more than 230 people had been laid off in two-and-a-half months. The latest came on Veterans Day when 126 workers learned their time with the company was over. And unlike in August — when 105 laid-off workers were allowed to finish the week — those employees were sent home that day. Stracquadaine, of course, doesn’t know if more layoffs are planned, but he said the recent rounds already have affected the area. “There’s not even enough jobs out there now, now that (Remington is) dropping 100 people at a time,” Stracquadaine said. “I don’t know where they’re going to get new jobs.” It’s not the first time the 198-year-old company’s workforce has fluctuated with the market. It’s not even the first time Remington has moved some part of Ilion’s production to an out-of-state location. But it is the first time the combination of a new Alabama facility, New York’s SAFE Act and high taxes has made some wonder: Could Remington leave completely? And what would that mean for Ilion? Flux and flow Farmhouse Restaurant owner Ellen Jones — who worked in Remington’s canteen for about 17 years between the early 1980s and late ’90s — said it’s not the first time the plant has seen a build up in employees followed by layoffs. “They’ve always had layoffs,” she said, noting that rumors typically accompany the cuts. “I think this is probably a little scarier because of the constant rumor of them moving out of the state.” Still, she said, “people don’t think to the past.” In a late 1987 Herkimer Evening Telegram article, the late Richard Heckert, then-chairman and CEO of DuPont — which owned Remington at that point — said: “A shrinking firearms market has forced changes at the local arms plant. In the 1970s, the company employed 2,700 employees. With a callback of 47 full-time employees this month, it currently has just over 1,000.” A July 11, 1987, Associated Press article went back even farther: Remington employed about 14,000 during World War II. But after the booming 1970s, a combination of things — primarily the declining steel, oil and car-making industries coupled with farmers going out of business in droves — dropped Remington’s workforce to 800 and forced it to adapt again. Read more at http://www.uticaod.com/article/20141130/NEWS/141129387.
0 Comments
UTICA
“I’m going to die.” That’s what 90-year-old Joe Rositano, who armed bombs as a member of the 15th Air Force during World War II, thought as he was drifting through the air, waiting for the right moment to pull the ripcord on his parachute. Minutes earlier, he’d been in the back of a B-24 Liberator after an all-out air raid over Austria, hearing the pilot confirming the worst: They’d been hit and were on fire. Rositano grabbed the side gunner’s window, holding on desperately as the plane went into a tailspin. “All of a sudden the plane just broke apart, just blew up,” Rositano said. Instinct kicked in and he successfully launched his chute — something he’d never done before. But when he looked down, he saw guns trained on him as he floated back to earth. “I’m going to die.” * * * German troops ushered Rositano, after a not-so-friendly greeting — one solider gestured that he was going to shoot Rositano — to a train to Stalag Luft IV, a barbed-wire-lined prison camp for allied airmen in northern Poland. But when an airstrike temporarily interrupted the trip, Rositano found himself in a culvert, face-to-face with another prisoner — a gentleman named Anthony Tomaselli, who’d been stationed in England. They made small talk as the planes passed, learning the almost impossible was true: Of the hundreds of prisoners en route to the camp, they were both from Utica. And they were both dating women who lived on the same small street: Wetmore. “You talk about chances,” Rositano said with a laugh. The two grew their friendship throughout their stay at Stalag Luft IV, where they landed before D-Day — June 6, 1944. Tomaselli later would be Rositano’s best man. But with scarce food supplies — often just one loaf of bread and some potatoes each day — to share with nine roommates, it wasn’t an easy year. “Prior to the barbed wire they had another, which they called the warning wire,” Rositano said. “If you stepped over that wire, there’s no excuse, you were shot.” He saw it happen twice. The prisoners got by listening to war updates on a rigged-up radio and rationing parcels of cigarettes, margarine, sugar and canned meat from the Red Cross. Read more at http://www.uticaod.com/article/20141111/NEWS/141119944. |
ABOUTPieces that were published during the eight months I spent covering Herkimer County and other topics in upstate New York. Archives
February 2015
Categories |