           It was the fall of 1965, and a
busload of us freshly-minted college kids passed through the gates on Ridge
Road and into another dimension. The tour guide said Kodak had everything for
everyone, not just company bowling lanes and such, but something we youngsters
barely grasped: lifetime employment. And the plant was so clean. Well, the air was industrial strength, but I was wowed.
           Soon enough, like real
Rochesterians, we’d be calling Kodak the “Great Yellow Father.” We’d
swallow the theory that Kodakers had no unions because the company
“outbid” them with high wages and wide benefits. We knew that in
Rochester, the ancient threat If you
don’t like it here, go someplace else implied a destination. Want to do
better? Lock yourself in the Big Yellow Box.
           And so we coasted, earning our
collective Brownie points as the company grew toward its zenith in the early
1980s. For every respectable Rochesterian, the proper attitude was “full
speed ahead.” Snapshooting was as immortal as American apple pie and as
international as Coca-Cola. And film would always, you might say, be on a roll.
A grand illusion. You can be sure the movers and shakers knew the real scoop
even back then. But as always, they weren’t inclined to share.
           Whatever was in their hearts, the
downsizing moves on, more mercilessly than Henry Ford’s assembly line. Over the
next few years, we’ll see 15,000 Kodak workers, a third of them local, get the
ax.
           The business-oriented Rump Group,
representing the hard political center, rightly says Kodak’s plan is “a
kick in the pants to the Rochester community.” But the Group’s bottom line
is pretty weak: “We must work even more aggressively to streamline and
promote economic development, reduce the cost of government, and improve the
economic climate for Kodak and other businesses to create new jobs.”
           Do these self-appointed community
leaders actually believe this? Maybe it’s true that Kodak’s top people are
small-minded enough to base their global decisions on such factors. But I can’t
see them reversing a 20-plus-year trend and adding jobs here if, say, the
county tax rate drops a few pennies. Of course, if we adopt Chinese labor standards…
           It’s not the Rochester area that
dictates its own local economy. It’s the class that steers private and public
investments on the macro level, through such massive pipelines as the military
procurement system. That class long ago dumped Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse,
and dozens of other “obsolescent” towns and shacked up with the
worldwide Sunbelt, leaving us with an ever-worsening mess. The route to a local
renaissance starts with change at the top — and we don’t mean only by dumping
Bush this year.
           Meanwhile, Kodak’s trying buy its
way into the community’s good graces. The company announced it was starting a
$15 million economic development fund to create local jobs. Then days later,
the company announced a hefty annual bonus for its workers. Even a front-pager
in the Democrat and Chronicle led
with the irony.
           Kodak’s soft-spoken PR spoke truly
when it said the industry “is undergoing fundamental, structural
change” and adjusting to “market realities.” The question is,
why aren’t government and society doing likewise?
           Technology shifts are inevitable and
desirable, and the “end of work” is not necessarily a terrible fate.
It’s just that workers have no power. When they’re “casualized,”
they’ve got few choices. And in a company town, with rump groups at the helm,
it’s almost impossible to get all the options on the table.
           Political options, that is. That
giant sucking sound you hear is the absence of discussion about plant-closing
legislation, decent unemployment and retraining benefits, universal
non-employment based health care, and the other social supports that allow real
people to control their lives and pursue their dreams.
           Amazingly, despite the news, there’s
incredible energy around here. Over at the Raging Burrito one day after work,
still chewing on the Kodak story, I downed a couple local beers while watching
some of Rochester’s younger crowd play volleyball. It would take a Walt Whitman
to fully celebrate the youth and optimism there. I wonder if the company
bowling alley was ever so dynamic.
           Human capital in action. Rochester’s
got loads of it. Too bad the likes of Kodak executives are the fund managers.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2004.
