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'All I Know Is That It Stinks'
Workers, businesses weigh brunt of P&W blow
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Business New Haven
8/23/99
By: Linda Mele
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North Haven First Selectman Anthony Rescigno says the August 12 news about layoffs at and the possible closing of the North Haven Pratt & Whitney facility was "not a total shock, but I did hope it wouldn't be as bad as this.
"They refrained from calling it a total shutdown, but it looks pretty grim," says Rescigno.
"Because the buildings and land will remain, the town won't feel a drastic tax impact for a few years, but the loss of jobs and the loss to businesses in the Route 5 corridor will be tremendous," Rescigno says.
Rescigno says meetings have been scheduled with P&W officials and he should have definitive details and a better idea of what to expect after those sessions have concluded.
Business owners along Route 5 says the move will affect them, but exactly to what extent remains to be seen.
"I think there's less than 1,500 people working there now, so the impact on my business won't be that great. But the impact has been gradual over a number of years," says Roy Nilsson, owner of a gas station at the entrance to the United Technologies facility on Route 5 where a huge brand new concrete entry sign and some significant landscaping were installed not long ago.
Phil Scarpellino, father of Scarpellino's Sub Shop owner Dominic Scarpellino, whose eatery is about one-quarter mile from the facility, says Pratt workers comprise about 15 percent of the shop's business.
"This won't put us out of business, but we'll definitely see a dropoff and we'll have to pick up someplace else," Scarpellino says.
"Somehow, we'll survive, but the ones taking the beating are the Pratt workers because they're losing 100-percent," Scarpellino notes.
Workers such as 15-year employee Ronald LaRiviere, 48, of Milford, who makes $22 an hour with his second-shift bonus are the ones who will feel it most.
A repair machinist, LaRiviere will see his job, along with those who work in similar positions, moved to Oklahoma, Texas and Singapore, he says.
"This is the end of the line for me," LaRiviere says. "I'm going to need to find a whole new field. I've got two kids in college and one in high school, and I don't know what I'm going to do. All I know is that it stinks," LaRiviere says.
New Havener George Brown, a 16-year veteran machinist who is making about $17 an hour, says he will most likely go to East Hartford.
"It's an additional hour and a half commute every day, but it's better than losing my job," Brown says.
International Association of Machinists District No. 91 representative James Parent says that by contract the North Haven facility cannot be closed during the life of the agreement.
"The language [of the contract] says they must continue to produce a product until the contract expires in December 2001. They are not living up to the commitments they made to us and to the state of Connecticut," Parent says.
Connecticut AFL-CIO President John Olsen says the news from Pratt & Whitney illustrates the necessity of preserving high-skilled, high-wage manufacturing jobs "that are central to Connecticut's economic vitality.
"When these jobs go, they don't come back. It's time to get to the bottom of the mounting job losses which have nothing to do with factory-floor productivity - and to ask hard questions of the corporate executives who seem intent on slowly squeezing out the lifeblood from a vital sector of our economy," says Olsen.
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