International Paper has announced it will close its mill in Courtland, Alabama, leaving 1,100 workers jobless

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/25/pape-s25.html)

Governor Bentley is a worthless, empty sac; and the whole Alabama legislature are nothing but sycophantic whores - all of them. Lawrence Co. is a poor county (as are most counties in Alabama) this mill was beyond huge, beyond just the "main employer" - it was nearly everything. People from this whole part of Alabama are walking around like zombies - they cannot get their heads around this plant being gone. The plant had 1,100 employees - that doesn't include the hundreds of ancillary jobs that exist because of the plant. This is a crippling blow to the folks in this whole area. And Bentley just shrugs and says, 'let 'em eat bark'...


Tim Nicholls, senior vice president for IP’s printing and communications business, stated, “We explored numerous business and repurposing options for the Courtland mill, but concluded that permanently closing the mill best positions us for the future.”

The mill’s closure is a disaster for its workers. “We never dreamed it would be us,” said Johnny Phillips, who has been working in the mill for over three decades. “The hardest part for me is looking at the youngest members. There aren’t many private employers in the area that pay what we get paid.”

There aren't many employers in the area, period.

Governor Bentley is a worthless, empty sac; and the whole Alabama legislature are nothing but sycophantic whores - all of them. Lawrence Co. is a poor county (as are most counties in Alabama) this mill was beyond huge, beyond just the "main employer" - it was nearly everything. People from this whole part of Alabama are walking around like zombies - they cannot get their heads around this plant being gone. The plant had 1,100 employees - that doesn't include the hundreds of ancillary jobs that exist because of the plant. This is a crippling blow to the folks in this whole area. And Bentley just shrugs and says, 'let 'em eat bark'...



There aren't many employers in the area, period.

This is some food for thought, like anything else that the capitalists do this is for their competitive advantage but unlike most cases there is good social reason to stop this production. To continue production of products for which there is no need or want is a waste of labor and resources. Of course in a socialist society all of the negative aspects of such a decision would be covered, the workers would recieve their full compensation for however long it would take for retraining, re-purposing the plant or whatever measures were of best advantage to society. During the salad days of American capitalism some of these measures might be half heartedly addressed but that anomoly is done and gone, capitalist necessity lays bare the nature of the beast, same as it ever was.

By rejection of the most basic 'liberal' pallatives, 'principled libertarianism' over the practical gamesmanship of the capitalist 'welfare state' the capitalists flog the working class relentlessly in it's grave digging.