Hocus focus

The first in an occasional series exploring the impact of continued corporate downsizing on the region.

Thanks
of a special sort are in order: Pop guru Spencer Johnson, co-author of The One Minute Manager and purported
master of “taking complex subjects and presenting simple solutions,” also has
given the world Who Moved My Cheese?

            Populated by mice with names like
Hem and Haw, WMMC? bills itself as “a
simple parable that reveals profound truths about change.” The “cheese” stands
for “what we want to have in life,” like a job and a future. You “can enjoy
less stress and more success” as forces reshape the world you live in, says the
book. “Movement in a new direction helps you find new cheese.” Got laid off and
need a new job? Work on your attitude, and pack your bags.

            Something seems to be missing. “They
never answer the question of who moved my cheese,'” says Vincent Serravallo, a Rochester Institute of Technology
sociology professor who uses the book in his classes. You’re just supposed to
accept the fact that it moved, he says.

            “You’ve got to be fast on your
feet,” he says, interpreting the book’s message. “Rather than ‘hem and haw,’
you’ve got to shift to the next
opportunity.”

Plenty of
Rochesterians must be chewing on this sort of thing. Report after report
chronicles this area’s shifting — and sometimes shifty looking — fortunes.

            At the core of this is Eastman Kodak
Co., whose downsizings and operations transfers have defined Rochester’s
economic curve for two decades. (Kodak spokesperson James Blamphin asked we
submit questions by e-mail. We did so; his office did not provide answers by
press time.)

            “Continuing in 2002 was a worldwide
workforce reduction, with the final phase to be completed in 2003,” says
Kodak’s last annual report. The company announced 3,000 layoffs here this past
July. Since the early 1980s, the number of Kodak jobs in the Rochester area has
fallen from more than 60,000 to around a third of that. Some far-flung events
have been emblematic: Two years ago, for example, Kodak opened a large
single-use camera manufacturing plant in Xiamen, China. A report from Photofinishing News showed CEO Dan Carp,
et al., smiling and holding “magic wands” aloft as part of an inaugural
ceremony in Xiamen.

            “I’ve been arguing that the last 15
years have been a watershed,” says Robert Manning, a humanities professor and
expert on trade and credit who works with RIT’s Center for International
Business and Economic Growth. Manning notes the lack of a national economic
policy in regard to the huge shifts underway. “But without regional economic policies,” he says, “there’s no pressure” toward
such national policy. He adds that George W. Bush “has manipulated tariffs and
subsidies to favor areas of his political strength.” This echoes what the late
Senator Daniel P. Moynihan often said: that New York doesn’t get back a fair
share of the money taxpayers in the state send to Washington.

            These developments, says Manning,
are “not accidents, they’re carefully planned, long-term decisions” with “huge
costs.” He notes a tragic irony: War-related federal subsidies flow to
contractors like Halliburton, while “the grunts in the National Guard” and
their families pay the piper. The costs are personal and social — like
increased child-care expenses for single-parent families keeping their home
fires burning.

            Is economic globalization is behind
all of this, particularly in an export-oriented area like Greater Rochester? “I
think a lot of people miss that link,” says Manning. One link he says people
should examine is environmental policy. We should press for stronger
environmental standards offshore in our own interest, he says.

            But just what kind of economic
activities should we cultivate to replace what’s being lost? In the typical
discussion, Rochesterians say biotechnology and the like will revive the area’s
economy. Manning says medical facilities and research will be vital to the
area’s economic health. But, he says, “just because it’s high-tech doesn’t mean
we should bring it in.” Whatever we do, he says, has to fit with the larger
needs of the community.

            “I’m not a huge optimist,” says
Manning. “You have to have forward thinking. What I see [here] is backward
thinking” rather than “getting outside the box.” That’s especially problematic,
he explains, at a time when the “competition cycles” have sped up. He
anticipates there’ll be “more pressure for public works projects” — but he
says that path has its limitations.

            Manning also looks at how
individuals fit into the world of modern industry. “The focus on technology
means that people are interchangeable,” he says. “I’m holding my breath for the
next round of [Kodak] layoffs in October.” He anticipates the layoffs will
increase the number of local retirees, and that this will portend further
change.

            “Rochester could attract a strong
retirement community,” he says. “Retirement is going to be crucial down the
line.” Though people think of, say, South Florida as every retiree’s dream,
this demographic has become significant in unexpected places. “Allegheny
County, Pennsylvania, has the biggest proportion of retirees in the United
States outside of Miami,” Manning says. (The Pittsburgh area long ago felt the
effects of deindustrialization — a collapse of its steel industry, followed
by a need to re-invent the local economy.)

            Manning notes that RIT is creating a
retirement community of its own. But there are potholes ahead: “A lot more
people than you think are whittling down their retirement savings” to meet
present needs, he says.

            Will Kodak shrink to nothingness,
leaving us with an empty industrial shell or even the kind of vast brownfield
that Bethlehem Steel bequeathed to Lackawanna, Erie County? Manning doesn’t see
that kind of abandonment happening here, exactly. “It’s in [Kodak’s] interest
to get the best value for their property,” he says.

            Indeed, Kodak’s withdrawal some
years ago from the town of Gates — the company’s closing of the Elmgrove
plant — didn’t leave a huge hole in the ground. The 500-acre site, with 5
million square feet of floor space, was resurrected as Rochester Technology
Park, helped by the usual public giveaways. This past July, for example, it was
announced that Heidelberg Digital will receive around $140,000 in county and
state tax breaks to expand at the park and increase its workforce there. But
Heidelberg inherited some Kodak operations years ago, so its “return” to the
former Elmgrove site doesn’t mean a big net gain. “Heidelberg has cut workers
this year, and officials have said the expansion will bring employment back to
current levels,” said a Technology Park news release.

            Moreover, after years of fishing for
tenants, the Technology Park still advertises that it’s “ready to lease space and shovel-ready sites totaling 350
acres,” i.e. there still are ample vacancies. And if this is true of the former
Elmgrove plant — a site that, unlike older industrial areas throughout the
region, has fairly new buildings and uncontaminated land — how much truer
will it be of a downsized Kodak Park?

            The city of Rochester, host to the
bulk of Kodak Park, stands to be a big loser from Kodak downsizing, of course.
It’s part of a generalized malady. In a WXXI-TV interview last year, Mayor Bill
Johnson said the city has lost nearly a billion dollars of its tax base in
recent years, much of this loss from a “declining presence of commercial and
industrial businesses.” But the ripples will move out through the town of
Greece, too.

            Kathryn Firkins, Greece’s director
of constituent services, says the full-value assessment of Kodak property in
the town is $122.5 million. But it’s going down: “We negotiated an assessment
decrease some time ago; 1998 was the last negotiated settlement,” she says,
adding that further adjustments would depend on future talks. The town has
felt, she says, “that it was better to have a gradual decrease.” In any case,
the decline hasn’t stung Greece too hard; as Firkins says, the overall
valuation of property in the town has continued to rise.

            Still, the numbers tell a story: In
1988, says Firkins, Kodak’s properties accounted for 18 percent of the overall
town assessment; they now account foraround 6 percent.

Individual
choices will cumulatively remake Rochester and its suburbs. But so will collective
choices. Which leads the discussion toward the complement and counterweight to
politics and the rule of money — civil society.

            Pamela Couture, a Colgate Rochester
Divinity School professor of practical theology who serves with the United
Methodist Bishops Initiative on Children and Poverty, has thought along these
lines. Rochester’s “civic and activist organizations are alive and well,” she
says. She recalls her years in Atlanta, Georgia, where people had “a sense of
being on the cusp of the future.” That doesn’t characterize her new home —
but Couture isn’t dismissive. “I think the signs of life are more significant
than the signs of death [here],” she says. “There’s an elasticity, a
responsiveness in Rochester.”

            Couture cites the example of what
she calls “a tall-steeple church” in Fairport. Members of this Methodist
congregation, she says, “decided to put themselves in situations they’re
uncomfortable in.” This translated into partnerships with residents of the
city’s poorest neighborhoods, she says. So where’s the beef? Couture says
church members linked up with the “Reality Tours” conducted by the local
antipoverty groups. In such collaborations, she sees much worth building on.
“That’s what’s become exciting about being here; I’ve become a convert to
Rochester,” she says.

            “There’s globalization that hits
right at your doorstep,” says Couture. The Third World experienced this first;
now it’s hit home, she says. And it’s hitting the very institutions of civil
society that make Rochester what it is. “I have a concern about what’s going to
replace the corporate money to keep the culture alive,” she says.

            Rochester often inspires comparisons
(pissing contests?) with Syracuse and Buffalo. The latter — once the
undisputed “Queen City” of the Great Lakes and an economic and cultural rival
to the then-more-modest Toronto — has recently been dubbed our “destination.”
(Not a travel stop, but an object lesson in how far the Rochester economy could
sink, given present trends.)

            The Syracuse example is nearly as
stark.

            Former Syracusan Patrick Domaratz, a
labor relations specialist with the local New York State United Teachers
office, is now a city of Rochester resident. He’s got a strong sense of déjà
vu. “I actually lived through the downsizing of General Electric in Syracuse,”
he says. At one time, he says, tens of thousands were employed in GE’s
facilities there; today around 2,000 work there for GE’s successor, Lockheed
Martin, now the “anchor tenant” at the huge plant along the Thruway.

            Domaratz says his family came from
Pittsburgh originally; they landed in Syracuse in the 1950s specifically to
work for GE. His father worked at the plant, he says, from 1956 to 1973. “They
used to make television sets and radios there,” he says. “Hard to imagine
today.” Later the father worked at a GM Fisher Body plant in Syracuse. “It’s
now a Delco plant in Valle Hermosa, Mexico,” says Domaratz. He rattles off
names of other corporations that have sent jobs offshore, like Carrier, a major
presence in Syracuse since 1937.

            Syracuse’s post-industrial evolution
hits the Domaratz doorstep, quite literally. Domaratz says his mother’s
comfortable suburban home, situated near a four-acre park, sold for just
$53,000 in 1998. He says that’s less than his own modest home in Rochester now
is worth. “It screams out what’s happening in Syracuse,” he says. He’s well
aware of the state of downtown Rochester — but downtown Syracuse, he says,
“has tumbleweeds blowing around.”

            Corporate management and organized
labor in Syracuse had a mutually beneficial arrangement for many years, says
Domaratz. Then management, he says, “broke the contract. They dumped thousands
of jobs… Syracuse found that ages 18 to 34 were leaving.” The inevitable
followed. The corporations, he says, “sought to lower their tax assessments
because their facilities weren’t being used.” This led, he says, to cuts in
public spending “shoved down the back of laid-off workers who owned property.”

            It’s not hard to guess why Domaratz
came here: Rochester, he says, “had a future, it had jobs.” But that was then.
“I’ve been here 16 years, and I’m seeing history repeat all over again,” he
says. “There’s a lack of bold leadership [here] to look in other directions.”
He has positive things to say about Green City Council candidate Jason Crane’s
platform, though: (The platform calls for “community-based cooperative
economics,” as well as particular programs like a “community enrichment index”
for awarding benefits to local businesses.)

Domaratz may
be suffering from déjà vu, but he’s not fatalistic.

            He points to hopeful signs in
another community he knows well: Buffalo. There, he says, the Western New York
AFL-CIO Development Group has begun a very targeted urban-development project:
building small power plants in the urban core. The plants, to be connected to
an existing “loop” within the urban core, will burn wood and “selected
garbage,” he says. The project, he says, is designed as “an economic engine for
sustainable jobs, a sustainable environment.” And the Development Group, he
says, is designed to “spread the benefits of unionism through longtime
partnerships.”

            Nor is it all abstract and
intentional: Domaratz notes that union pension funds can be invested in “making
something for the community rather than sinking it in Wall Street.” In this
connection, he says Buffalo activists are looking at rehabbing lots of the
city’s vacant homes. (Some of them are the famed “Buffalo bungalows” that have
been threatened by latter-day urban renewal plans.) The rehabs will put local
building tradespeople to work, as well.

            As one whose job entails sifting
data and digesting documents, Domaratz says the Development Group is fostering
something “different from the breakfast-club mentality.” He doesn’t add the
obvious: the Buffalo initiative isn’t another corporate appeal for cutting
taxes and boosting “competitiveness” — it’s about determining where the
cheese will be and letting people actually get a bite.

            Coming
up: A closer look at effects on the ground — people, communities, the
environment — here and throughout the region.

This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2003.