Click here to download the entire testimony, including charts and graphs.

Good morning. My name is Jim Wansley, and I was the president of our USW local at the Goodyear plant in Tyler, Texas, when the plant was shut down. I worked in the Tyler plant for 39-and-a-half years, my entire adult life. At the time the plant closed, I had been the local union president for seven years. I want to give you a little background on why Goodyear shut our plant, what we did to try to save it, and how the closure has affected my former co-workers and the community of Tyler, Texas. I am here today in the hopes that other plants around the country will not have to suffer the same fate our plant did.

Unfortunately, the industry has already announced plans to shutter three more plants by the end of this year, at the cost of 3,000 jobs: the Michelin plant in Opelika, Alabama, the Bridgestone plant in La Vergne, Tennessee, and the Cooper plant in Albany, Georgia. Additional layoffs are anticipated at Goodyear’s facility in Union City, Tennessee. Imports from China closed our plant, and they will close more if the industry does not get relief.

I would like to share with you some pictures of our plant, my co-workers making the last tire built at the plant, the plant’s silos being torn down and equipment torn out. These are painful pictures for me to look at, and I hope they give you a glimpse of the human cost of failing to provide relief in this case.

Ever since Goodyear told us imports from China put the Tyler plant at risk, the union worked with local management to make it a cutting-edge facility so we could keep ahead of the curve. We came up with our own equipment upgrades to improve productivity and expand our plant’s flexibility. Our plant became a leader within the company in all of the categories Goodyear tracked – productivity, safety, waste, etc. We were the second most technologically advanced plant in the company.

The problem wasn’t the plant. The problem was that the tires we were making were directly competing with imports from China. Goodyear opened the 2006 contract negotiations citing the threat posed by imports and insisting that Tyler had to close as a result. After a protracted battle, the plant was eventually shut down in several phases, with most workers gone by the end of 2007.

The closure put hundreds of workers, many of whom had given decades of service to the plant, out of work. The closure was devastating to the workers and their families, but it is also being felt throughout the community of Tyler, Texas. Tyler has a population of about 100,000. Like many small and medium-sized towns that depend on manufacturing for middle class jobs, the loss of these jobs has taken its toll. The Goodyear plant directly benefitted the local economy by supporting local small businesses who served as its suppliers and service providers.

The plant also provided enormous indirect benefits. Jobs at the plant paid good wages and benefits, enabling workers to lead decent middle class lives, buy homes, send their kids to college, and save for retirement. These are the kind of jobs that support an entire community as families pay their doctor bills, buy new cars, and contribute to local charities. The plant and its workers were also an important source of tax revenue for the city, the county, and the state.

The Tyler Economic Development Council commissioned an objective study of the economic impact of the Goodyear plant to build support for the facility when it was threatened with closure.

The victims will not only be the workers and their families, but the suppliers, service providers, local businesses, and entire communities that depend on the industry. In sum, there is an enormous cost to doing nothing. If more plants like Tyler close, we can expect to suffer total additional losses of almost a billion dollars per plant, per year.

With your help, we can avoid that outcome.

Thank you for your attention.