Where Was '60 Minutes' When Rust Belt Jobs Were Cut?

CAMPBELL, Ohio -- Sept. 19 marked 47 years since thousands of workers, who were mainly men, did what they did every Monday in the valley. They walked into the Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet and Tube along the Mahoning River for the early shift. Within an hour of the workers' shift, Youngstown Sheet and Tube abruptly furloughed 5,000 of them in a single day. Within months, 16 more plants owned by U.S. Steel shut down, including Youngstown-based Ohio Works. The company cited foreign imports, lack of profitability, aging facilities and the cost of growing government regulations on the industry to explain the move. Workers mumbled, "It didn't help that the company hadn't upgraded their facilities in decades." The community came together in a way that was passionate and admirable. The late Staughton Lynd, a leader in the 1960s social justice movement, said an emergency meeting was called by the Central Labor Union on the night of the first furloughs. It put a plan together to send petitions to then-President Jimmy Carter, encouraging him to stop steel imports and put an ease on regulations that were hurting the industry. Within three days, over 100,000 signatures were collected. Five chartered buses of 300 men, local elected officials and faith leaders went to Washington to deliver them to Carter, Lynd said. Former Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) joined them for a rally as they waved signs that read: "Save the Steel Industry." Lynd said Carter never bothered to send out an aide to receive the petitions when they arrived or acknowledge them. National newspapers buried the story on page A-12. If The New York Times wrote about it in real time, it was not found in its archives. The people here, it seems, were expendable to the elite. They had no college education, did not live in the right ZIP codes, and besides, someone overseas could do what they do. Had the Mahoning Valley been hit by a rocket, the region would have looked no less hollowed out only a few years later. The mills started to crumble, churches closed and mechanic shops shuttered. So did fraternal organizations, bowling alleys, barbershops and restaurants. Families were torn apart as both young and old left to find work far from home, ending traditions of Sunday dinner, church softball leagues and family picnics. Exactly one year ago, just 60 miles south in Weirton, West Virginia, 900 people lost their jobs in much the same way when Cleveland-Cliffs Steel announced it was idling its tinplate production plant, the last tinplate plant left in the U.S. Thirty years ago, over 10,000 people worked at Weirton Steel -- 30 years ago, Weirton boomed just like the Mahoning Valley did. Now the mill is shuttered. "Honestly, how many times does this story have to be told before someone in power cares about our lives?" a worker asked that day. Locals said CBS News' "60 Minutes" did not come to speak with them about the plant closing last February. Few Americans like to see anyone lose their job -- a termination notice can be both economically and emotionally devastating, leaving the mind racing about how to pay for a mortgage or apartment, food, utilities and car payments. Then you question whether your skills are in demand. Steelworkers in the 1970s -- and those who worked in industries that supported the plant, such as the machine shops that made the widgets or the mom-and-pop grocery stores they stopped at after their shift -- knew their skills weren't needed anymore. The education system seemed designed to do that. For 100 years, vocational tech schools taught children the specific skills for one job or career. However, those programs started to disappear in the 1980s. What is interesting today is the massive media focus on college-educated professionals losing their jobs thanks to government scale-downs. The people of Weirton and Campbell would have appreciated this empathy when their lives were shut down. Yes, nostalgic stories have been written about these towns in the past few years in an attempt to understand President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. However, when the fall began, those were minimal in the national news. Other types of layoffs make headlines across the media. Case in point: On a recent "60 Minutes," Scott Pelley interviewed a woman named Kristina Drye, who lost her job during the U.S. Agency for International Development shutdown. "Twelve days ago, people knew where their next paycheck was coming from. They knew how they were going to pay for their kids' day care, their medical bills. And then, all gone overnight," Drye said. It is a sentence heard over and over again from people not just here in the Rust Belt but all across the country. Private-sector America has had to deal with "shut down and all gone overnight" instability in their lives for decades. The days of job security for anyone not working for the government began incrementally descending in the 1970s. By the 1990s, a Times survey showed that "two-thirds of Americans believed that job security has deteriorated." People under the age of 60 in the private sector, whose fathers often worked at their companies for decades, found themselves having to deal with a new kind of relationship with employment that went from secure and long-term to employers using temporary workers or offshore subcontractors or part-time workers. People who do not work in government have reluctantly gotten used to having to possibly relocate, reeducate and scrape by on less or take on two jobs to make ends meet. Few national news organizations make them the center of a glossy and sympathetic example of the politics of CBS News' disdain of Trump. What CBS News clearly does not understand is that this episode of "60 Minutes" showed it doesn't have the same empathy for the millions of people in the private sector in the middle of the country who have experienced the same sharp gut punch of uncertainty. Rarely has a cameraman showed up to their homes to ask them to tell their stories. "60 Minutes" did not do a segment on the steel valley back then when people lost their jobs. Within a decade, 40,000 jobs in the area were gone. Within 20 years, 100,000 people left the region, leaving a scar. No large news organization came here to calculate what the tragedy those job losses would have here or in Weirton last year. Experts tell those who lose their jobs to move, relocate, be more mobile and dismantle their families, roots and tight-knit communities. That's why the "60 Minutes" episode rubbed people the wrong way: They didn't tell the government workers the same thing. People here say they don't want anyone to lose their jobs. They just wish the national press covered this instability evenly. Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.