The Alpha and Omega of Illinois jobs

Bill Knight column for 10-28, 29 or 30, 2019

 “Sunrise, sunset,” goes the song, and when it comes to good news and bad for Illinois workers, it increasingly seems that the way of the world makes every glimmer of hope darkened by disappointment,

Amazon this month announced plans to open a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in suburban Chicago that the company says will employ about 500 people when it opens next fall.

Reportedly, Amazon’s forthcoming Channahon location will be one of some 20 facilities opened or planned for Illinois, joining sites in Joliet, Monee, Romeoville and Skokie.

But…

… more than 850 people working in Illinois manufacturing, retail and other employment sectors are losing their jobs, according to the state Department of Labor.

The biggest mass layoff is occurring at Champaign’s News-Gazette Media, which is selling its daily newspaper, shoppers, websites and three radio stations serving markets in eastern Illinois to Community Media Group, a West Frankfort, Ill., chain that publishes newspapers throughout the Midwest and parts of New York and Pennsylvania.

About 130 workers are affected by that sale.

Elsewhere, three factories are cutting jobs totaling 320 positions: Advance Engineering Corp. in Elgin (114 jobs), which is moving, Gates Industrial Corp. in Galesburg (120 jobs), which in a prepared statement said, “This transition is a necessary decision to further enhance our support of our in-region and for-region production philosophy, as well as to optimize our footprint and increase overall operational efficiencies” (whatever that means), and Chicago Powdered Metal Products (86 jobs), which provided no explanation at all.

Two huge retail companies also detailed layoffs, and they were tied to bankruptcies. Chicago’s swanky clothing store Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy, laying off 128 workers, and Transform KM Stores of Illinois – operating pharmacies in Kmart locations and affiliated with Sears – announced it’s laying off 91 workers.

Sears filed for bankruptcy last year and emerged as the Transform company, which still operates 425 stores with 45,000 workers. (Sears also is reportedly laying off 250 employees at its Hoffman Estates headquarters.)

Workers at two other companies also face unemployment. Starting Friday (Nov. 1), Nestle USA is reorganizing and laying off 121 workers at its Glendale Heights dairy and food-product wholesaler, and Dedicated Logistics in Aurora is laying off 61 workers from its trucking firm after it said it lost a contract.

Unions represent workers at three of the eight companies:

* The Communications Workers represent workers at the News-Gazette,

* the Chemical & Production Workers sector of the International Union of Allied Novelty and Production Workers have a bargaining unit at Chicago Powdered Metal Products, and

* the Steel Workers represent employees at Gates, where about 100 of them will keep their jobs for the time being.

Illinois’ job losses in the last 90 days total about 7,000, according to data from the Illinois Department of Labor’s WARN list based on the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and other reports.

So, declarations that the economy is booming may have momentary proof, such as Amazon’s expansion, but other evidence points to businesses that either continue to struggle or just sacrifice their labor forces and communities for their shareholders.