Bart Stupak: “Whether it is banking or whatever, and I hope the folks listening do not just think it is Georgia or Florida we are…”

“Whether it is banking or whatever, and I hope the folks listening do not just think it is Georgia or Florida we are talking about but it is everywhere, whether it is Massachusetts or Michigan. My home area, northern Michigan, I represent the northern half of the State but even my little community of Menominee, which is 10,000 people, and Marinette, Wisconsin right across the border, 12,000 people, we had 4 paper mills in the area. Recently we have been devastated by layoffs. 896 workers have been laid off since September of 1996. Our paper industry up there in northern Michigan, each of our mills found their own little niche in the market. What happened? The big corporate multinational company from Australia, Visi, comes in. They like this nice little plant in Menomonee, so they buy it. They buy it for two reasons, the niche or the product line we produce and our customer base. So they buy this plant, they buy our product line, they buy our customer base. Then suddenly, even though that mill makes money and machine number one, paper machine number one still made money, it was not as efficient as they wanted it. So without any responsibility to the community, machine number one is gone, that is 220 workers, and all the support in that factory needs it. Kimberly-Clark takes over, Scott paper, Scott tissue, we all know that. Kimberly-Clark came in, bought the product line, bought the customer base, basically shut the place down.”