By Geoffrey Wertime, Staff Writer
FLORENCE — It’s been almost 23 years since Ted Moss first got a position in the production arm of the Griffin Pipe plant on West Front Street.
But today, Thursday, will mark the last day there for not only him, but about 170 other employees at the company.
“From the very beginning, I would say it was a sad moment, but I don’t think it’s really hit home to anyone yet,” said Mr. Moss, of Willingboro, the unit chairman of the grievance committee for Local 2040A, the union representing Griffin employees.
“I don’t think it will hit until everybody’s been out of here for a couple of weeks,” he said.
Griffin originally planned to close production for two months, but Dec. 3 the company announced the layoffs would be permanent, citing a drop in demand for ductile iron pipe. Of Griffin’s 200 or so workers, 35 will stay on until Feb. 27 when the workforce will drop down to 12 people for the foreseeable future.
The plant will continue to act as a distribution center for Griffin, an Illinois-based pipe manufacturer with three production sites serving markets throughout the country. The other fa-
cilities, according to the company Web site, are in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Lynchburg, Va.
“I will never forget,” Mr. Moss said. “Management notified our U.S. Steel District representative that the plant would be closing. They notified him around 8:30 p.m. that evening, and at about 9:15 p.m. I got a phone call from him. That was the longest night of my life.”
The next day, Mr. Moss spent 12 hours sitting in as a union representative while batches of 15 to 30 employees at a time received the “bombshell” that they would be out of work in mid-February.
“You look around the room and see the look on everybody’s face,” he said. “There was agony; there was pain. A lot of hurt, put it that way.”
But despite the bitter news, he said workers have not slacked off in their final days at the plant. Feb. 5, just a week before closing, he said, if anything, production has improved since the layoff, citing the workforce’s “class and dignity.”
Given the state of the economy, the soon-to-be-former Griffin employees will face a tough job market with no other manufacturing plants nearby. Mr. Moss said the company pays about $18 to $22 an hour, not including overtime, which accounted for a significant amount of time in an environment where 12-hour days were common.
Since the announcement in December, the company has made efforts to help the employees it is laying off. Various representatives have come in for three workshops on signing up for unemployment with a fourth planned for the plant’s last week, Mr. Moss said. Instead of having to wait to get into the system, he said everything will be set to go Feb. 13.
Visitors from the American Federation of Labor also came in to give tips on finding a new job, he said, including how to write a resume and how to get in the right mindset. And the company itself is offering letters of recommendation to those who ask, Mr. Moss added.
He expressed some frustration with the conditions that led to the production arm’s shutdown, which he said was expedited by the state, particularly through high state taxes and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
“I don’t think the state of New Jersey is manufacturing-friendly at all,” Mr. Moss said. “If this plant was in the Midwest or in a southern state, or possibly in Pennsylvania, I don’t think this plant would be closing.”
Workers, he said, feel abandoned by some of the state’s politicians, who he said “could have tried” to keep Griffin Pipe open, particularly given the fate of the other manufacturing plants that used to be its neighbors in Florence.
“River Road has become a skeleton,” he said. “It used to be a booming industry.”
The Florence site was formerly the R.D. Wood Co. It was also the first plant in the country to manufacture cast iron pressure pipe, the Griffin Web site said.
Mr. Moss’s next move is not yet planned, he said, but as he has an adult daughter partially dependent on his income and “some years to go” before retirement, he will be on the lookout for work.
“I’ll be one of those statistics,” he said. “It’s had to replace a well-paying job.”
