Southco - Menands, NY
(1940-2001)
2000 Troy Softball Game
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Last of Southco's workers now jobless
Menands -- Pennsylvania-based fasteners company closes doors
on its Menands plant
By KENNETH AARON, Business writer
First published: Saturday, December 29, 2001 Times Union
At Southco Inc., which closed Friday, computers were wheeled out the door on
flatbed dollies and telephones were shut down. And some of the plant's last 30
workers, now jobless, wondered what, exactly, would come next.
"I'm confident enough to get a job,'' said Mark Riel, product development
supervisor at the maker of fasteners and latches. "I think the economy's only
going to go up.''
His co-workers can only hope his optimism is on the money. With the last of
Southco's 133 workers put out of work Friday -- and some estimating that just 30
percent to 40 percent of them have found new jobs -- many are wondering what to
do and whether to remain in the Capital Region.
"It's tough -- it's lousy right now,'' said plant manager Kevin Hoyt. "The
manufacturing base in the area has eroded significantly.''
Southco will live. But not in Menands, where its predecessor, Simmons Fastener
Corp., was started in 1940.
The company, which makes products used in a wide array of items, such as
recreational vehicles and instrument cases, was an offshoot of Simmons Machine
Tool Corp., a 91-year-old maker of precision equipment for the railway industry
that still operates in Menands. In 1988, Concordville, Pa.-based Southco bought
Simmons Fastener's parent, Amfast Corp.
Hoyt is hoping the skills offered by the displaced Southco workers, many of whom
have been on the job for years, will be enough to convince some employers to
open their doors.
He rattled off their skills, in the hopes someone is interested. The company's
workers know about metal stamping and assembling and engineering. There are
administrators and tool-and-die specialists and management types, too.
A year ago, Hoyt's hopes might have been better placed. Back then, area
businesses were starved for quality workers.
Now, scores of workers are available.
But, in an ironic jab, the economy has soured to a point where fewer companies
are hiring.
"It's a difficult time to be unemployed,'' said Gary Balfour, general manager of
Ceramaseal, a New Lebanon-based manufacturer that has hired one Southco worker.
Balfour doesn't expect to hire more anytime soon.
"I believe we're seeing a bottom, and that's a good thing,'' he said. But the
go-go days of the late 1990s are likely gone for a long while.
Many are hoping to ride out the bad times. Southco offered six senior-level
positions to local employees after the shutdown; just one accepted. Nobody
wanted to leave the area, said Michael McPhilmy, the company's vice president of
human resources.
Jerry Crucetti lost his job Nov. 2 and is still looking for another. Going
elsewhere, he said, is a last resort. "It just takes a long time to get roots
down,'' he said.
He knows of four colleagues who left for other states.
With a wife and two children, one in college, Crucetti needs to find a job with
health insurance and other benefits. He doesn't want to take a lower-paying gig
but says, "I may have to take a job I don't really want just to take benefits.''
While he said it looks as if other areas are offering many more manufacturing
jobs, Jeffrey Lawrence, executive vice president at the Center for Economic
Growth, the Albany-based economic development group, doesn't know where that
place is.
"I don't know, nationally, where the grass is greener,'' Lawrence said. "Other
regions across the country are in much worse shape than we are here.''
Industrial production in the United States fell for the 14th consecutive month
in November.
Just a year and a half ago, things were still looking good, said Riel, the
product development supervisor. Southco installed new equipment, was hiring
workers and even put in a new roof.
"The future was bright,'' Riel said. "We were going well.''
But the 70,000-square-foot, two-story factory building on Broadway just wasn't
modern enough to run efficiently, it was decided by Southco management earlier
this year. And as the economy worsened, the plug was pulled on the operation.
The skids came for many area companies this year. Garden Way Inc. led the
brigade, closing down and axing 550 jobs. Others laying off workers included
International Paper Co., American Tissue Co. and Nibco Inc.
"We supplied employment to a lot of people for so long down here,'' Riel said.
"There was a wide variety of skills here.''