Update - Kimberly’s last remaining paper mill closing, taking 475 jobs (July 31, 2008)

Great two-part series by Barry Adams in the Wisconsin State Journal, Paper mill jobs disappearing; stunned workers look for alternatives, and in this morning’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, we read the news, Midwest Airlines to cut 1,200 jobs.

I grew up in Wisconsin Rapids and spent two summers at a mill working as a summer replacement employee (SRE), when I was a student at UW-Madison.

It was work, and a 20-something art history undergraduate woman was not always treated with immense kindness by long-time colleagues.

But Adams' articles capture well the devastation wrought far and wide. Few who grew up in the Rap don’t know at least one friend or family member who hasn’t lost a job in the last several years.

The mill closing is the latest casualty in Wisconsin’s iconic paper industry, which has lost more than 16,000 jobs over 10 years, according to the latest state figures. It’s also another blow to the state’s struggling manufacturing base. - Adams, WSJ 

The problem as I see it is the Bush-McCain approach (“… always so reluctant to support federal aid for mere people …”- William Greider) toward those citizens who are out of work through no fault of their own: Tough shit.

I have a great job now in Madison. But I think this Bush-McCain approach toward the jobless is less than compelling for most voters.  As for the Bush-McCain war on organized labor, forget it.

I am hoping for a new deal under an Obama administration; like something on the order of a job for anyone who wants one.  That's a lot of people.

And you do that kind of thing, next thing you know, people start looking at health care as a right, and soon citizen groups are organizing and demanding of their society that it be organized for the benefit of its people.