On Tuesday the North American Stamping Group (NASG) announced it will be ceasing production in Muncie. Although the closure was announced this week through a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, the plan to consolidate two of their facilities was announced earlier this month. Their two facilities, including the Muncie location as well as the company’s Bryan, Ohio facility, will both be moved to Paulding, Ohio and Portland, Tennessee.
The facility, located at 3401 W. 8th Street, has 62 employees and layoffs will begin on November 30th. Just over twice the amount of workers were employed when Duffy Tool owned the plant prior to NASG, who employed roughly 130 people. NASG started its operations here in 2009 and it is their only location in the state of Indiana. They are not union-represented.
Mayor Dan Ridenour was quoted in the Star Press “it’s the market” and “it’s unfortunate” with regards to the departure. Currently there are no reasons cited for the closure by the company other than consolidation.
Follows Closures Already Seen in Muncie
The same year that NASG took ownership of the facility, BorgWarner ceased their operations and roughly 800 employees were laid-off. Although the closure of BorgWarner was seen as a nail in the coffin for deindustrialization in Muncie, the 1990s saw this transition for the city emerge, when companies such as Delphi Automotive, Westinghouse Corp, and Ball Corp were leaving. Simultaneously while there were several manufacturers leaving, there was a major increase in investment for Ball State University and Ball Memorial Hospital. Then-mayor Dan Canan, who served three terms between 1996 and 2007, was able to successfully revitalize the Downtown through a combination of public and private funding, something that went unaccomplished by previous mayors David Dominick and James P. Carey. The transition for Muncie and its new recognition as a college town has maintained its status as a second class city and had helped revitalization efforts immensely.
The change, however, gave less economic agency to individuals who relied on manufacturing jobs for better wages and collective bargaining abilities. The benefits of Muncie as a college town instead had more positive effects for the wealthier north side of town. The history of that class divide was described by Max Fraser in an article for Dissent Magazine:
“The White River had always been an important dividing line in Muncie. When the Lynds first came in the 1920s, it appeared to them an unbridgeable class boundary: political and economic power in the city lay with the industrialists and professionals on the north side, while the working class to the south was marginalized and acquiescent. But in the half-century that followed, the rise of industrial unionism throughout the Midwest would narrow the gap between north and south Muncie. Not only did wages and living standards go up, but as union members banded together to elect labor-friendly politicians or support one another in their workplace struggles, the political dynamics of the city shifted as well. Muncie became a union town.”
Max Fraser continues:
“But then, Muncie’s economy went into reverse. Between 1979 and 2009, manufacturing jobs dropped by more than half, and all the largest union employers–Borg Warner, which at its peak employed upward of 5,000 UAW members at three transmission plants; Chevrolet and Delco Remy, which employed thousands more–shut their doors or left town. In the process, the poverty rate ballooned to 29 percent, and the local tax base collapsed. Instead of coming to Muncie for work, people now followed the jobs out: from a peak of around 77,000 in 1980, the population shrank to 70,000 by 2010, and would have gone much lower if the city hadn’t begun furiously annexing surrounding suburbs to the north and west. By any measure–population loss abandoned homes, crime–the brunt of these changes were felt south of the White River.”
In his characterization of the deindustrialization era, he also points out the population loss mentioned time and time again by our local officials. And, how the current economic base of Muncie largely impacts people north of the White River positively. While we have major employers, there is little done for the local tax base or for jobs all around the city. The paragraph below was published for the book “Back in Middletown” in 2000:
“Today, the expansion of the college in Muncie is a relevant factor in the city, where many activities revolve around the university. Twenty thousand students in a city of twenty thousand people is no small factor, and it is a factor that certainly has changed the image and reality of Muncie since the period of the Lynds. Ball State University, as the principal institution of the X family, has continued to flourish in accordance with the wishes of the state of Indiana, which is especially proud of the space it has given education and training.”
Is There A Future?
There have been promises to bring jobs to Muncie but with shortcomings. In 2019 Waelz Sustainable Products was about to open a plant that would employ 90 people, however due to severe environmental concerns many citizens protested. The debacle is covered in our Muncie Political History archive. The former GM plant site, now an industrial brownfield, was at one point was considered for a solar field, but because of cost and land concerns the city council voted against the plan.
In 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, headlines and articles emerged insisting there was a possibility that nearshoring would be needed in the United States and could bring back manufacturing in small towns like Muncie to solve supply chain shortages. But as a solution to supply-chain issues, investors can still find locations in cities in Mexico instead of the U.S. Beyond manufacturing, Accutech Systems has been able to operate downtown, with financial help from the MRC as a way to encourage the tech company to remain in city limits, however many were unhappy about the incentive grants requested by the company.
Continuing to embrace BSU and BMH as the leading employers in Muncie could encourage opportunities for unionizing and better contracts, but many worry about how sufficient said jobs are for the health of the city. Another approach is that rather than focusing on BSU in particular, Muncie can compete in the knowledge economy independently of the university. But for any possibilities that might arise for Muncie in the near future, an emphasis on people should be prioritized.
Notes
https://www.wishtv.com/news/business/muncie-factory-to-close-62-jobs-lost/
https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/manufacturer-to-close-muncie-facility-lay-off-62-workers)
https://fox59.com/indiana-news/muncie-stamping-factory-is-shutting-down-laying-off-workers/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/254104455
https://www.thestarpress.com/story/news/local/2024/07/26/north-american-stamping-closing-muncie-plant-idling-62-employees-nov-30-muncie-richmond-indiana/74560067007/
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/down-and-out-in-the-new-middletowns/
Caccamo De Luca, R. (2000) Back to Middletown: Three Generations of Sociological Reflections. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. pg. 117.