May 1, 2021
Jobs mean security, self-worth, and quite obviously the means of survival, so what happens when they are lost? To show us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Stockman considers the recent closure of Indianapolis's Rexnord steel-bearings manufacturing plant, with operations moved to Mexico and Texas. Stockman relates the story through the experiences of three workers: a Black man named Wally who had dreamed of opening his own barbeque business; white machinist John, whose family has deep roots in the union; and Shannon, a single white mother who had been the first woman to run the fearsome furnaces.
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Starred review from August 16, 2021
Pulitzer winner Stockman debuts with a vivid and empathetic examination of “what jobs mean to people.” She centers the narrative on three former employees of the Rexnord bearing plant in Indianapolis, Ind., which announced in 2016 that it would close its doors and move production to Mexico and Texas. Shannon Mulcahy, who had been one of the first female steelworkers at Rexnord, credits the job with helping her escape an abusive marriage and support her multigenerational family. Since the plant’s closure in 2017, she’s struggled to find work that will provide the same benefits and sense of pride. Wally Hall sees the plant’s closure as the spur he needs to try to launch his own barbecue business, while union leader John Feltner has harsh words for coworkers who agreed to train their Mexican replacements for a $4 per hour bonus. Stockman contextualizes developments in her protagonists’ lives with lucid discussions of globalization, immigration, and the rise of the service economy, and casts events against the backdrop of America’s recent political turmoils, noting that Donald Trump’s harsh criticism of Rexnord’s closure earned him supporters among the plant’s workers. Throughout, Stockman interrogates her own political and cultural assumptions, and draws vibrant profiles of her three main subjects and their colleagues. The result is an intimate and captivating study of the forces dividing America.
October 15, 2021
A Pulitzer Prize winner's first book tallies the social, emotional, and financial costs of a company's decision to shut down an Indiana factory. Stockman shows the shattering effects of globalization on the unskilled workers sometimes called "the precariat" for the precariousness of their jobs. In this immersive account, she follows three former employees of the Rexnord bearings plant in Indianapolis after the company's 2016 announcement that it was moving its operations to Mexico and Texas. Each worker's life was upended by the shutdown and, the author argues in mostly persuasive fashion, represents a larger cause. Shannon Mulcahy, one of the first female steelworkers at the plant, embodies the women's movement; Wally Hall, a descendant of slaves, the struggle for civil rights; and John Feltner, a vice president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, organized labor. Stockman examines the steep price the workers paid for the closure, which included having to train their Mexican replacements in order to get a severance package. Behind their stories lay the stark realities of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has led to a loss of 700,000 U.S. factory jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and of Trump's failed promise to bring jobs back. The author notes that her research altered her view of free trade: "Supporters of free trade say it generates enough wealth to compensate losers. But we don't." Throughout, Stockman "re-created" scenes in ways some readers may sometimes find confusing or cringeworthy, as when she writes that one woman had "skin the color of a freshly unwrapped Hershey's kiss" and another "had silky skin the color of salted caramel gelato." She appears to be trying to capture a subject's point of view, but she doesn't enclose them in quotation marks, and it's hard to be sure whose thoughts they reflect. The stylistic awkwardness aside, this book gives a valuable account of the many things work means to Americans. A worthy but at times stilted portrait of the lasting effects of job losses on factory workers.
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Starred review from October 1, 2021
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Stockman follows three employees of a closing factory in Indianapolis, expanding on her reporting for the New York Times in 2017. The Rexnord factory, which manufactures ball bearings, and its 300 remaining employees were unexpectedly thrust into the national spotlight when then-president Donald Trump tweeted a promise to stop jobs like Rexnord's from moving to Mexico. Stockman spent months in and around Indianapolis with the people at the center of this now-national drama. This book builds on Stockman's riveting New York Times reporting with added detail on Rexnord, the factors that contributed to the company's decline, and the lives of factory employees Shannon, Wally, and John, whose personal and professional struggles she carefully layers. Readers follow Shannon, Wally, and John from the ascension of their careers, to the elimination of their jobs, to training their new counterparts in Mexico and Texas while the Indianapolis factory closed around them. This richly detailed account focuses on just one factory in one city, but it still manages to capture the human impacts of outsourcing, automation, and the decline of factory trades. VERDICT A well-crafted nonpartisan study of the American working class that is a desirable addition to any nonfiction collection and will find a wide audience.--Jennifer Clifton, Indiana State Lib., Indianapolis
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