On April 30, George F. Hasty made the long walk off the grounds of International Paper’s Isle of Wight paper mill for the last time. Just days before, he was offered a job as a machinist at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Newport News shipyard.
Hasty is one of 133 former IP workers the shipyard hired in the wake of the mill closing. Ninety-four of those workers have started their jobs. The remaining 39 will begin in the coming months.
The Newport News shipyard, which Decker said receives between 8,000 and 10,000 electronic job applications a month, was so impressed by the quality of the IP workers that it set up a separate database to capture their applications to be sure each one was reviewed.
Paper mill closure blamed for rising unemployment
Area unemployment rates are continuing to climb, largely because of the recent closure of the International Paper Co. paper mill in Franklin.
“It is predominantly mill driven,” Nancy Parrish, manager of the Franklin Business Incubator, said Friday of the local unemployment figures. “We knew that with the mill winding down those numbers would grow. Hopefully they should level off and start dipping soon because some of the mill workers have found new jobs.”
About 100 people worked their last day at the International Paper Co. paper mill in Franklin on Wednesday.
“We’re hopeful that as summer progresses we’ll have some answers for folks about where the facility is going from here,” Wadsworth said. “There’s no timeline for this. We’re just right now in the process of evaluating the options for the mill and coming up with the best possible solution for what happens in the future.”
ISLE OF WIGHT – The exodus of International Paper Corp. employees ends today, when the final wave of 100 workers leaves the shuttered paper mill for the last time.
“It will be pretty quiet there after today,” said company spokeswoman Donna Wadsworth. A skeleton crew of 30 will stay on indefinitely to handle facility upkeep and records management, she said.
Approximately 1,100 workers have lost their jobs since the first round of layoffs began Dec. 31, weeks after the company’s November announcement that it would close its southern Isle of Wight facility.
We were cheered by last week’s news that 25 percent of the workers displaced by the closure of International Paper Co.’s Franklin mill already have landed on their feet — even before the final wave of workers leaves the IP campus on June 30.
Randy Betz, vice president of workforce development for Paul D. Camp Community College, has been tracking the employment of mill workers since IP’s announcement last fall that the mill would close this spring. As of Friday, 275 mill employees had either started other jobs or accepted job offers.
Forestry is big business in Virginia and produces more than $23 billion of goods and services annually in the Commonwealth. There are nearly 700 wood products manufacturing facilities in Virginia. Additionally, byproducts from these manufacturing operations are burned to produce electricity that saves more than 2 million barrels of oil annually.
The IP (International Paper) Economic Recovery Task Force Forestry Committee has worked to provide information to interested companies that may want to locate on the mill site or other potential sites in our area. Our region has come to the attention of domestic and international companies hoping to capitalize on our location, our natural resource and our valuable and experienced workforce.
Generally speaking, when people in the forest industry talk about their wood basket, they are referring to an area where wood is available that may be used by a particular manufacturer such as a paper mill, sawmill, pellet mill, particleboard mill, chip mill or any other wood-using facility.
If we look at our wood basket within a 100-mile haul distance from Franklin, there are 58 counties and cities in Virginia and North Carolina that provide timber to the overall market.
Six years ago, Randy Betz lost his job at the International Paper mill as part of a corporate downsizing.
Now, as vice president of workforce development at Paul D. Camp Community College, he is helping hundreds of workers at the mill do what he did – find a new start. The mill stopped production last month and is expected to close in June.
In an interview at the school last week, Betz said he is encouraged by the number that have already found work. Most of those, he said, will not have to leave the area. What follows are excerpts from the interview.
As the afternoon shift change unfolded at International Paper Co.’s Franklin mill on Friday, change was in the air.
And on the ground.
Friday was the last day for 212 workers at the mill as it prepares to shut down for good this summer, eliminating 1,100 jobs. Many left their hard hats on the ground just outside the mill entrance. Dates of employment and other messages were scrawled on almost all of them.
“In God We Trust, Not IP.”
“That’s All Folks!”
“Good Luck Everyone!”
Oscar Babb of Franklin — an employee of the mill for 32 years, most of them as a millwright — crouched down to take pictures of the makeshift memorial of hard hats, boots and clothing.
“It was very sad,” Babb said. “It’s just like losing your family. No, it was losing family.”
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 2, 2010
FRANKLIN
George Steinbach started working at the paper mill outside Franklin in 1937, even before it began making paper. He never expected it would stop in his lifetime.
But two weeks ago the machines shut down. International Paper will phase out employment at the mill and officially close it in June.
Steinbach retired in 1973, long before International Paper bought the mill in 1999 and in January, he turned 102, making him perhaps the oldest living former employee. He even remembers when the mill produced only brown paper.
