Pratt Employees React To Plant Closures

Two Pratt & Whitney plants will close in 2011. The engine repair facilities in Cheshire and East Hartford will go, after more than a year of struggle between unions and management over their fate. WNPR’s Harriet Jones recently spoke with some of the people who work at the Cheshire plant.

At the machinists’ union headquarters just down the road from the Cheshire engine repair plant, several men are clustered around a whiteboard, moving numbers into columns.

“The number one concern was—will I have a job after these negotiations.”

Wayne McCarthy is president of the Cheshire local.

“And now that we are confident that we will all have a job, it’s a different uncertainty.”

Workers learned last week that there won’t be any layoffs as a result of the closures – 470 workers have opted to take a buyout from the company, meaning that there will be work elsewhere, at the main East Hartford and Middletown plants for those who are displaced. The union’s job now is to decide who will go where, based on seniority – those are the numbers on the whiteboard.

“I’ll have 12 years in June, which in Pratt & Whitney is nothing. So it’s scary, I know I’ll have a job, but it’s still up the air where, or what I’ll be doing.”

Michael Shermer is an inspector at Cheshire, and he’s one of those who will be moving on. Pratt and Whitney announced last year that they intended to close Cheshire. Shermer says his experiences in the intervening time have changed him.

“The past 16 months has been rough, it’s been very difficult –puts stress on a marriage, the kids have noticed it. My 11-year-old son was crying about it. To me, I think that’s wrong, no one should have to go through that.”

Jerry Marcil runs the Employee Assistance Program, or E.A.P. for the Cheshire plant. He says he’s seen plenty of people like Shermer in the last year.

“My services were normally part time, and for the last several months the company and union agreed to have me do my job full time as the E.A.P., the need was to that extent.”

He’s been busy referring workers to services for counseling or job training, or dealing with stress-related absences. He says the focus is always on keeping positive.

“Sometimes people just need to have a place to vent and blow off steam, and a lot of times what I’ll try to do it build people’s confidence and we kind of look at this as an opportunity.”

But there’s definitely a lot of anger at the Cheshire plant. Dave Bradbury is a jet engine technician.

“A month before they made the announcement we had a record sales month exceeding 100 million dollars, and they gave us cake and sandwiches and everybody got a nice new shirt. Then a couple of weeks later come in and said well, geez, the economy’s terrible and we gotta shut you down.”

In the past, Bradbury been active in lobbying legislators to try to secure government work for Pratt & Whitney.

“It’s kind of a slap in the face, because they want us to support them in lobbying for contracts, whether it’s the tanker or the F35, they’re coming out and – please help us – and turn around, we still have a job, but we don’t have our jobs.”

All the people I spoke with said they believe the closures will erode the skills base in Connecticut, because the work at Cheshire and East Hartford is unique to those plants. And technician Tony Whelan says while there will be no layoffs, for the union, there’s the larger picture.

"It’s bittersweet for everybody I think, what happened. The big concern for a lot of people now is that we’re that many people smaller in the workforce here in Connecticut. And in the end what’s going to happen? Over the last 15, 20 years, it’s steady decline."

For WNPR, I'm Harriet Jones.