Shannon Mulcahy’s job at an Indiana steel plant moved to Mexico. Donald Trump vowed to keep factory jobs inside the United States. We discuss how the president’s promise of “America First” has met the realities of American manufacturing. Guests: Farah Stockman, a national correspondent for The New York Times; Shannon Mulcahy, a former factory worker. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
From the New York Times, unlike over his tail tat, it
she's. In more cases, job in an indian steel plant was headed to Mexico. Donald Trump vowed to keep those kinds of jobs inside the United States. How the promise of America first has collided with the reality of american manufacturer. It's Wednesday October. Eighteen, I'm gonna bring jobs back, we're bringing jobs back to our country, we're not gonna. Let carrier leave we're gonna, take Dunbar's we're gonna, do not birds. There are consequences when you leave and we'll talk about Jerry figures. So what you wanted there I predicted about carrier. Now
for much right before, I even knew that we will get a becoming. I mean, literally from the day, literally from the day. Just a mild down the road from the carrier. Plan in Indianapolis is the Rex Nerd plan where steelworkers have been manufacturing. The Cadillac of steel bearings for nearly sixty years, strengthening the parts through a pro
says known as he treating I gotta say. I've never ran scrap the whole time. I've been there. I ve, never you never.
Scrap. Ok, I guess that's kind of shop talks. Crap is like a bad part like
going mad. Then you send an answer:
A Shannon more k he worked at registered for almost eighteen years and he treatise gotta be pretty much perfect. You know we ve got different customers that
and on that burying it can't fell out on the field. I mean whether it be
conveyor abridge, different things like that and hurt somebody out there on the film and, if you in that part say you didn't tempered enough. Ok, that will lead to the part, cracking and breaking somebody's herb infrastructure that carry human beings pack. And fourthly, we aim brief, pretty vital. I'm take pride in my work. Shannon is a forty three year old, single mother of two who dropped out of high school
my colleague, Ferris Stockman, has been reporting on the plan. She was a legacy higher. My uncle Jerry got me a job on there. It start out his janitor and at the time you had to know someone to get a job with a factory, and so she begged him for a job here, one kind of like the janitor who cleans bathrooms and it was the janitor who shovels out the machine chips and the cool I feel the coolant pump out. The machines of the coup is a nasty job, but I stuck with it. I was actually working as an assembly at this time. When I signed the heat treat job, I was trained by well what I call the old timers, the old timers would say he trees, not for a woman and haste her. They
tried a lot of different ways to kind of get her to quit and I'll be honest with you. I was ready to walk out that department. I was doing a light up on the furnaces and which sets the most dangerous party your job and to turn the furnace on yet to light the furnaces- and I was doin yap listening to him. He does not go over there and open that thou.
There, you didn't say, opened slowly or anything. I just went over there and I open that thou than that son of a gun went boom is scared crap out, and I really was really think about leaving at that point, but I hidden, I actually learned from them sabotaging better than anything. I think he's I had to figure it out. You gotta go on earth. I got down to turn a machine on rigid and chin and got to know these machines really well and she had personalities of findings machines, her favorite one was the taco. I know it. Like the back of my hand, I felt, like I pondered with that machine. You know me
The taco is probably by best furnace, say that I would run for all the years. Then I've been there. I mean the talk of two talks about the taco, like it's a needy boyfriend that breaks down whenever she doesn't spend time with their anybody was having problems and get it ran. I was sent over there to try to troubleshoot to get that thing. Around
it was essentially in charge of the furnaces there and working with dangerous gases working with fire in a position that no woman had ever done before. When I would, you said
you know on the target like I didn't: have a cd player because of olive oil in the air and stuff
I may be so hard in their music. Will. Take your mind asked how hard you really are in the Eu Treaty
entire that Bob senior linen scanner. If you like, a hundred twenty five degrees. Sometimes
and she was known
for being able to tell if the parts were gonna come out right just by the sound of the spinning machine like when you run it apart and it's gonna sound state aid over this bet, there's like
a frequency, sound okay and whereas some guys like to go back and look at the power supply and and watch the number
I don't do that. I just I can tell by the sound the sound she could just here from the pitch weather.
You need to add energy or add heat. She just do the machines that well that she can do it by feel. If I get a high pitched tone
It's very unique nothin's, I can't say anything sounds like it because it doesn't. If it's got a really doll,
who really low bogged down found. I know that's not good and then if it's got a high pitch. I know this is a really detailed and involved processor describing yes, it is.
It, takes experience, it's not something you can just train overnight. I will say that it takes experience takes time, so I really got this picture after spending so much time with Shannon of how she had really grown up in the factory. She started at eight hundred and twenty five when she was this hot young thing that would turn heads on the factory floor
by the time she was forty three. She was a woman who was used to having oil in her hands. She would come home and our kids would say you smell like cars, these horrific a mechanic. I guess I was just my style and I like the fact that
you have to get up and put make up on and all that staff and try to look pretty to go to work. I could roll out of bed and do my make up there. If I had to
or even nodding, aware mega, so that Sparta alike. She became one of the best, because
work your way up from a janitor all the way to being a heat treat operator, which was one of the highest paid positions. On the factory floor, I would pay two thousand five hundred and sixteen an hour. I started out at seven dollars and fifty three cents an hour when I started out there and then I would say I
work ten hours a day, five days a week and then I'd work, eight hours, Saturday and Sunday and
would bring home lover grand a week, good money. Yes, it is good money. Then financially, this job was of was a big opportunity for you very big up
unity for me, never would have dreamed. You know that I was able to
that money and drive a nice car not have to embarrass my daughter by taken or to school. Like my mom, I say, stay God bless her
my mom was a single mother and she didn't have a college degree or anything
she work cleaning rooms and restaurant. So we really never had anything. Much of anything growing up to the kid I would need to go to the store with my mom, sometimes because I was embarrassed because she had to use food stamps, and I mean it
I have in that kind of money. I bought me a new car, a house in, like
in and by my groceries with money that I worked for this job here
would be able I'll be able to stand on my own two feet
and be able to take care of myself, not depend on anybody. You dont depend on. Oh man, you mean no offense, but you never know about men. I dont depend on cause, you never know
it sounds like men. They have also disappointed you somehow
be honest with you area all my life, she was domestic violence survivor essentially, and she basically was liberated by getting this job at this factory, in a position that no woman had ever done before. So on October 14th. Fourteen two thousand sixteen I just got into work.
She came in that Friday and my boss comes to me and says Shannon. He said I want you to shut everything down, put the furnaces and idle at one thousand. Five hundred degrees take the gas out, and she said what, when you're done, just come to a meeting in the back dock and I'm like what are you serious and he's like? Yes, please by the time she was done, she started walking to the
He could hear her coworkers yelling and they were just told that the factory was closing and their jobs and move to a new plant in Mexico. I am ass a coat and a mother facility in
Mc Gowan, Texas. I know that this regrettably top message- and you guys have a lot of work at this time because we just engaged just like the steel workers to start talking. I dont have any further information. I can't answer was somebody's workers had spent their whole lives in this plan. They were totally shocked, even though
company had been secretly planning as four years scobie its opt out due you go on
or I mean I'm about made it to my car and I cried and cried, and I just was thinking what am I going to do.
Even though I make good money, I still work paycheck paycheck I
plan on saving any money for something like this to happen. You know, I would have never thought- and this was a really tough time for her, because Shannon also had a daughter who was a high school senior who wanted to be the first and her family to go to college, and
Jan and wanted to try to help for pay for it. I was freaking out like his. I don't want her future to be ruined, because I lost my job and unable to pay for her to go to college, and she also had a son who was really financially struggling. Didn't have a job depended on her financially and he had a four year old daughter who was disabled and they both depended on,
Shannon's paycheck she's, the breadwinner, the house. I got to have a roof over her head and you know a decent place for her to live. You know if it was just me. I mean I I can live on
If I had to, I don't want you that all of that, but you know it can happen that quick. I just want you sure. I understand you're financial and familial obligations at this point when, when you hear that your employer is gonna, be moving all these jobs to Mexico, you have your house. Yes, you have your car, you have a son who doesn't work. You have a daughter, you're helping to support and you have a quite sick.
Granddaughter, yes, as well as just yourself, you everything that you needed you take care of yourself. Am I missing anything now in my dog, the night that had happened, she drives home, she's incredibly upset and she writes on Facebook. The she wishes that someone would burn factory in Mexico to the ground while she was so upset, and she just didn't know what to do next. She couldn't believe that it wasn't against the law. How could this not be against the law to send people's jobs overseas or card? What has gone up?
are going to make this decision now. The Fox NEWS decision DAS, as Paul Pennsylvania for Donald Trump in a few weeks later, Donald Room Window the election,
Donald Ge Age Wrong is the president of the United States. He spoke to the disinfected, she said
becomes hopeful that he's going to save her job.
She's, not the only one, a lot of the covert. Isn't this factory felt like age. He was definitely gonna save their job, especially after Trump started tweeting about than the present age we did about their company. Yes, erects Nord aspiring three hundred workers, no more bullets, wakeful President Donald Trump criticizes, Indianapolis manufacture, election or for moving plants and jobs to Mexico. Anything ETA company decision to move to Mexico is getting renewed attention tonight from President trot. He tweeted said Rexrodt of Indiana is moving to Mexico
other viciously firing all of its three hundred workers. This is happening all over our country. No, I thought will. While he does notice us people, that's down here
You know, and they spent hours debating like what does that mean no more no more including lacks, nor is rucks Nord included in the no more, but a lot of them really took it as a sign of hope he's going to save this factor. I was very hopeful. All of us were hopeful lot of us. There,
ignored was thinking that you might stepped in and stop what was going on. You know, so you believe the Trump
But, Mr President, why couldn't you can do whatever he wants right boy, I mean and is kind of you know cause he's still like a cowboy. He says things probably like a lot of past presidents. Wouldn't save so I mean
the way he talked about american jobs in and
All that I was making you know this could be the opportunity were right. You know a lot of our jobs might come back from overseas and things like that lot people get their jobs back. That would be awesome. You know
chief voted for a bomb on two thousand eight. I did vote for a bomb in. I do still to this day say that above is good. President was a good president in IRAN. I wish she could be there again. She liked what he did for healthcare and she thought about voting for Hilary, because pillory talked about the family Medical Leave ACT and which is something that can and had used when her granddaughter got sick, but at the end of the day the job was the most important thing for Shannon it was her entire life. It was her identity, the other
things were you know they were luxuries. They were a social safety net that she didn't want to have to need. So she was on social media supporting trump. She would tweet to him any time you tweet about rents nor and she tweeted back. He was all over her face prepaid. She felt like he did care about people like her and spoke her language, so she got really excited and thought that maybe they would have a chance that he would sweep in and said. I see MRS offer me. First of all, welcome to carry out wasn't honour to welcome President Electronic as well as vice President Elect hence, and the new governor government from Indiana today, a couple weeks after tramp winds, he comes to Indian Apple S announces this deal to save some,
jobs at a place called carrier and in fact it's the same union and the President Elect of the United States of America Donald Trump. So the people at the Rex nor Implant get their hopes of even more. You can see it in their facebook page is a lot of them are like he gets result. It's gonna happen. You have to understand. We cannot allow this to happen anywhere with our country, so many jobs are leaving and going to other countries
not just mexico- many many countries but will losing companies- is it's unbelievable one after another, just one after another, we're gonna have a lot of phone calls made to companies when they say there, thinking about leaving this country, because in that leaving this country than I can leave this country and the workers are going to keep their jobs and they can leave from state to state and they can negotiate good deals with the different states in all of that, but leaving the country's gonna be very, very difficult cell, so they get even more exciting
but the company keeps pressing forward with its plans, and you see a letter from the ceo hanging,
and the Bulletin board saying nope we're moving and we're gonna bring mexican trainees into the plant in the next few weeks, and we want you to train you replacements and if you don't you're, not gonna get a severance package. So every single worker on that factory floor was faced with the decision of. Do I train my replacement or do I refuse and there was a huge divide between the ones who decided to train them.
This and the ones who stood up and said now
last days were agree.
If you don't train this company screw, they have to have us a train. If we stick together like we're supposed to within a union their screw, they don't have anybody to teach them anything.
A lot of the union wrapped the union itself really encourage people not to train their replacements, their protest as a protest. They thought they could save the plant because the corporate bosses and many of the supervisors didn't know anything about building bearing and
couldn't train the mexican replacements, so they needed those workers to pass that knowledge on and the
Workers knew that he saw a lot of
People in the union, where, like we just refuse,
we might like do you know.
Buddy. Absolutely MIKE.
She told you what do you think? They're scared just be honest with you no differently. If we re launched right across the picket line, it was a very divisive time. Friendships ended,
People stop speaking to each other. While I go verbal attacks, emotions or higher did Monaco purposely. This attack
all Damon. So I led a couple days
violent address, basically said man. I can't believe you can do that. You know you're, so
this all out. One guy walked out of the factory and quit when he heard that his friend had signed up to train
walk at an end and along the way to walked away from everything and he left like
More than ten thousand dollars and servants- and I later
talk to him and he said yeah, it's just depressing to see that you ain't got a future. We talk a lot in this country about the white Working Class, the working class. We talk about it like its white, but in fact the working classes, not why there's a lot of black people and the working class, and as factory
about forty percent black and from what I could tell people really got along then we're on the bowling team,
gather they went to colds games together, they ate dinner at each other's houses. There were at least two romances that I knew of that were interracial. It was a very interracial factory, but I noticed a pattern. A lot of people who were so upset about the closing the people who walked out without their severance are the people who went on television and talked about how they felt like nothing. They were so outraged by this. They were white
and when you talk to the black workers, so many of them made the decision to train right away from the beginning and with no shame they just raise their hands, they said
we get that money. We can't change this decision. We can't stop it. Let's just agree to train and get that money through. How do you account for the grievances of the white worker and their unwillingness to train the mexican workers versus the general willingness of the black workers in the factory to participate and that you can see a lot of studies, nation, wide studies about the american Dream and optimism and you'll find that working class whites are very pessimistic about the future. They don't believe the feature is gonna be better than the past because they have seen their economic prospects decline for thirty years. You know in the sixties that factory was probably all white men and in order to get a job there
You had to pretty much know someone in there, so they had like a monopoly and all those jobs and then over time you see their monopoly on the job disappears. There's no denying that the economic prospects of of white guy without a college degree has declined pretty dramatically over the last thirty years. Where is everybody else have still seen an upward climb because they started from such a low place? And so I think when you talk to black workers, one they didn't feel entitled to the job and two they thought well, we're used to it where you some bad things happening to us
three. I think they still feel like the best days her head. What about the women in a factory I mean, I think the women were also more willing to volunteer to train.
Maybe they needed the money more or maybe they remembered what it was like when people do not want to train them.
I stopped and I thought about it new know, granddaughter. I had spent months in a coma that year she lost all her fingers, somehow the canyon punctured through her heart, so she had went into party echo.
She has a scar on her chest. I took my eyeliner and I traced the scar around your chest and it looks just like an angel wings right on the front cuz she had like for open heart surgeries at
she doesn't work any more. She don't talking more. She has a trick. She lost all.
Fingers on her right hand and arm. She lost all the tipps of her finger. But I'll tell you why she's a fighter kiss you still here and she's still she's a happy little baby. She goes through a lot. I think you know things could be worse.
Your granddaughter name, Carmona Carmelo, Linda Marie Roberts, so Shannon River
It has a lot on her shoulders this year and she really thought. Well, I need this money. I need this money to take care of my friend
and take every time I can get and that's what's important year. That's what the main goal
here. It's all about that dollar bill that mighty
dollar bill. You know that
and make it. Why can make it because I've never had a chance again to pry make that again. So ultimately she decided to do the training. So when did the mexican workers first arrive?
So right around Christmas time, the first group comes and when they walk in the plant, some people freeze, I don't
I just we just looked out on me now
Revived the liking of the mexican workers are here. You seem walk by intergroup and stuff like that and how did Shannon approach the Mexican requested she resent them? Does she embrace them? I think once they came, she really pretty quickly
formed a bond with them. She took one young mexican training under her wing and really decided to train him. The way that she'd been trained pretty much. I think I am mother, he and his kind. I like he was just like he's my son's age he's a good kid. You know she could have just done the minimum. She could have just answered a few questions, but she wanted him to know the job and she trained,
the way that she was trained so she's, passing on this knowledge, and that knowledge is really all these workers have right. It's what makes them valuable as people in their minds, and I guess in the factory itself had I volunteered
I didn't say you never could really say his name right after I train him. He go to lunch and he would come back. You brought me a cookie from his launch her now and pieces. My friend tells me that you know a lot of your people here doesn't like us. He says I'm sorry, I didn't know that were I'm taking your job, I'm so sorry that, and I said now I said: don't
Be sorry, I said it's corporate greed. I said just I'm glad that you are able to have that opportunity like I was able to have that opportunity. I can tell from the heart he was very sincere about how he felt bad. Yet he did not know. No one told them. No one told them, and so Shannon tried to be super nice and super beat with them, but she would never leave them alone, the factory she took them everywhere. She went because she feared something might happen to them. I mean she didn't say it in so many words, but she didn't want anything to happen to them, so she protected them. Yes,.
Did she say? Why should that I mean, I think all of the trainers ended up really seeing their trainees as human beings and seeing themselves in this other person very respectful and very nice. Very much so like me, you know so what happens in the summer? Fair.
So in August. The last time I went to Indianapolis was the sort of the culmination of all of this. Her daughter goes after college. She dropped her daughter off at college and then the next day she goes into the factory and their disconnecting her favorite machine. The taco one of the mexican team is there.
And there are taken away from her and I had to turn round a walk outside so that everybody can see me cryin neighbours, upsetting very soon
because I feel like everything even now, it's very upset in cars can everything scope and there's nothing. I can do about it, get up and go on
then seem like a pretty poignant moment. I believe it was actually call on video of where you are in this kind of empty factory. What was at this at this point? What does it look like inside?
How many machines are are left. What is starting to look like it looks like it goes factory the factory was so empty that I was able to write or bicycle off trail shall I say, ride all round the factory on the bicycle, because there was nothing left town looks. There's nothing left at what point it did. It did dawn on you that that the president did nobody, but especially that the president could do anything about this were wouldn't or to say I don't know, features nor eat. You wouldn't.
I feel kind of let down. Shall I say you know, as you just said, that, just because it his campaign, then after he's got in there than he done forgot about us it. We know it don't matter anymore,
you always raised the tariff and all the others have. Why are you why? Why wouldn't you have done it? Try to tell them? I don't know what they do it. You know he's got other things to tend to were not. I don't think that bore part of his sir agenda anymore. Other topics
Children's last day was two weeks here.
When it comes to doing my last loading
Ernest for the last time they didn't hit me to learn. The things are distinctly different on trying to get a justice and not feel so. Workforce die no one, but I feel worthless. Why do you feel worthless because I felt like I don't feel as good about it is filling secure to be able to support my family? That's why they're, how they can just up and rip it away from here is just wrong. I mean I guess they like. I said if we wasn't make any money- or we do in such a poor job by minors when you do get a job in even tell you doing a good job they turn around,
throw you decide like you're, nothing, it's very hard to take and to swallow. You know that you know, and it's like I'm not that marketable out there who's going to want an old woman. Now you know, I think it's just been a roller coaster. Seven months and I think now that's over she's finally got to sit down and look at her life and decide what she does. Next, who does she become now that she's no longer the heat treat operator at the spa?
factory I lived and I breathed my job. I was in there a lot of time, seven days a week for lot of years, and I am grateful that my uncle got me that job. I am grateful and thankful that I was able to have that job, because a lot of people don't look out that way. Cuz, I didn't have a college degree, but you know I made as much. Money probably is some of the college degreed people that you know- and you know
yet we get and turns it come in over there and they won't know anything, but they have. They have a lot of years, a college, but so that's where they August
knew more than me, but not really when it comes to run in the parts
The Rex Nerve factory was originally slated to close in April, but that was delayed until September because the new plants were taking longer than expected to get up to speed, Shannon's daughter, Nicole, just started as a freshman had produced a versatile where she's planning to study nursing. She was awarded more than thirty thousand dollars in scholarships to cover to wish he was what else you need to know. For the third time a federal judge has blocked president tromp from enacting a ban on foreign
probably just hours before it was said, to take offend the latest band, which would have borne citizens of seven contracts from entering the EU. S was designed to avoid the claims of discrimination that have undermined trumps last to bans, put judge, Derek Watson of. Why found that the ban was discriminatory.
By borrowing entire nationality with out proving that they pose a threat to the. U S and
later this week, surrender Murray and I, with other centres, will introduce by partisan legislation to give states additional flexibility to create more.
Prices of health insurance policies in the individual market. These, after the president, said he would cut off the payments that have made insurance cheaper for the poor under the affordable care at two leading centre, Republican Lamar, Alexander and Democratic Patty, Panama, say they reached a deal.
Would fund those payments for the next two years. Our goal is a feeble,
and then lower the cost of premiums and to an end
all Americans to have access to help ensure without the payments the times. Your points ensure
premiums for low income. Americans are expected to soil, and many companies may start offering insurance under the Asia. So we conclude that the best course would be to take this limited bipartisan first step. That would avoid the chaos that could occur during twenty eighteen and twenty ninth
President Trump City is open to supporting the deal, but it is a short term solution so that we don't have this very dangerous little period. That is for the deal. I'm Michael Barber suitable support,
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Transcript generated on 2020-07-18.