STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
A man named Donnie Ingram will lose his job at the end of this month. He's being laid off by the South Carolina company that he served for more than 30 years. In these final days, Ingram walks the floors of a massive textile mill. He passes the sewing room and an area called the bleachery.
Mr. DONNIE INGRAM (Resident, South Carolina): Bleaching, yeah. We bleached, dyed, and finished cloth, yeah.
INSKEEP: And so there's a bunch of machinery in there to deal with the cloth.
Mr. INGRAM: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
INSKEEP: And what's happening with it now?
Mr. INGRAM: It's being taken out and being moved to Brazil.
INSKEEP: The same company will run the same equipment using South Americans who work for less.
That company, known as Springs Global, will leave behind thousands of employees who will vote in their state's presidential primary. Republicans face the voters tomorrow, and Democrats next week.
So we're learning how those workers are adapting to the loss of their community's main employer.
Ms. ANGIE HUNTER(ph) (Resident, South Carolina): At one time, this was the largest fabricating and finishing facility under one roof in the world.
INSKEEP: Angie Hunter met us in front of the red-brick complex in Lancaster, South Carolina.
Ms. HUNTER: Fitted sheets, flat sheets or pillow cases - they would pack it, ship it out and it would leave all over the world.
INSKEEP: We are looking at a complex. It looks like it stretches over - the equivalent of several city blocks.
Ms. HUNTER: It's humongous. I mean it goes way back to the river.
INSKEEP: Hunter is among thousands who lost their jobs. Now this is just a distribution center for products made elsewhere.
But Hunter has returned. She works in the state unemployment office that took over some of the vacant space.
Ms. HUNTER: It took me 11 months to get a job. Yeah, because whenever I left here, I knew I wanted a state job. The state never lays off.
INSKEEP: Angie Hunter says former Springs workers may have to live with a longer commute or lower wages, or both.
One person has accepted a much longer commute as the man we'll meet next. It's after midnight as we're recording this. We're bouncing along a rural road, we've just crossed the border into North Carolina, which is where we expect to find a former Springs textile worker who has a new job at Tyson Foods. We're going to join three Tyson workers as they get off the evening shift.
Hi. How are you?
Unidentified Woman #1: Hi.
Unidentified Woman #2: Hi.
INSKEEP: All right.
They turn on the radio and carpool back to Lancaster. All three work in the Springs textile mill. Today, one is earning more than at the job she lost. The driver, Sam Blamour(ph), is paid less.
What did you make at Springs, if I can ask that?
Mr. SAM BLAMOUR (Resident, South Carolina): Our wage was $12.67. That's low operator(ph).
INSKEEP: And then you got the job at Tyson's. And how much is that pay?
Mr. BLAMOUR: $9.65.
INSKEEP: Which is, what, maybe about three quarters of what you were making before?
Mr. BLAMOUR: Yeah.
INSKEEP: To help make up the difference, this native of Liberia works overtime. He also accepted Tyson's offer to help pay for college classes. He hopes that he will not always have to return to his family's rental house at 2:30 in the morning.
At a diner, a few hours later, we met a former Springs textile mill supervisor. Mike Montgomery dug into his omelet and shrugged off the loss of his high-paying job.
Mr. MIKE MONTGOMERY (Resident, South Carolina): We've been blessed. Our lives have been blessed. We've seen the Lord carry us through a lot. And he put me in an industry that I could contribute to with a bunch of good people. I have a strong faith, and I want to share that. I like to finish well.
INSKEEP: Montgomery put up his house up for sale. He's attending a seminary. He's studying to become a missionary or a minister. He never expects to match his former income. That is also true of Donnie Ingram, the man who's finishing his textile job this month at age 52.
Mr. INGRAM: It's hard to find a good job at that age because you're at the age where you're too old for me to hire you, but yet still you're not young enough to do what they want you to do. You're right in that zone that's not called - not that good zone. I mean it's just the best part to be in.
INSKEEP: Last November, Ingram agreed to host a visiting presidential candidate.
John Edwards met a dozen Springs workers in Ingram's dining room, and mentioned to him in a debate this week.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS, (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): When I see a man like Donnie Ingram, who I met a few months ago in South Carolina, who worked for 33 years in the mill, reminded me very much of the kind of people that I grew up with.
INSKEEP: Yet, like many former workers, Ingram has not decided how to vote in South Carolina's upcoming presidential primaries.
He's more occupied with paying for his daughter's wedding, and securing his own future if he can.
Ingram wants to throw his severance pay into a business he's been sharing with his wife.
Mr. INGRAM: I'm trying to get my video business off the ground, full time. See, we got a part time video business.
INSKEEP: Video business.
Mr. INGRAM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: What sort of videos?
Mr. INGRAM: We do video recordings. We do church events, weddings, birthday parties, things of that nature.
INSKEEP: So, if I want someone to video tape my wedding…
Mr. INGRAM: That's us.
INSKEEP: Donnie Ingram is hoping other people's new beginnings also become his, but he knows that other Springs workers have trouble starting over.
Ms. SANDRA GEIGER: Everybody says, you know, they say, oh, a year from now, it will be great. You won't even think about it. But it's been a year, and it's still not any better than it was.
INSKEEP: That's Sandra Geiger who met us at Lancaster's unemployment office. She's among hundreds who report every Monday to put in for a weekly check. She let us follow her home where she sat on a couch with her mother. Carolyn Summers worked 42 years at Springs and brought her daughter into the company.
How did each of you get the word that you were being laid off?
Ms. GEIGER: I just went to work one day, and actually it's a really sad story too because it was on my birthday. And they called and said you need to go - they had a little conference room that they called you to. And you knew when they called you there that was what was going to happen.
INSKEEP: And they will say you're gone as of today or…
Ms. GEIGER: They say, get your stuff and go home.
Ms. CAROLYN SUMMERS: Now with mine, they - I lost my job on a Wednesday and they told me that my last day would actually be Friday. That's probably the hardest thing I have ever gone through. I went through a marriage and a divorce. I lost my father at an early age. I lost my mother in '99. But nothing compares with losing a job that's your livelihood, and not knowing - especially at my age - not knowing what you're going to do.
INSKEEP: Carolyn Summers showed us where she found the answer on the wooden porch of her daughter's mobile home.
Ms. SUMMERS: That's one thing that got me started - is because we had a guy to build a deck, and I thought, I could do that, but I needed to learn how.
INSKEEP: Which she's doing now. A job training program provided money for community college. And at 63, Carolyn Summers is studying to be a carpenter. She's renovating her daughter's bathroom. Listen to both of them and you sense how former textile workers are changing.
Ms. SUMMERS: I've always loved tinkering and building and putting stuff together. But I wanted to learn the right way to do it, and that's why I'm in school is now I know how to do floor joists or put up sheet rock. This gives me an opportunity to do what I want to do, for the first time in my life.
Ms. GEIGER: I'm presently trying to find a job, you know? But, like I said, mom was talking about being lost. Well, I think I'm still lost. Cause it's really, you know, I'm not as strong as her and I just - I don't know if I want to go to school. I don't know, you know, what I want to do, but I'll figure it out. But you know, like I said, you know, like Mama said, you know, we'll trust in God. And he's got something out there for me, and I think I'll get there.
INSKEEP: Sandra Geiger's mother brings her a tissue. And then both stand up. They step out on the deck, passing Bible verses chalked on the kitchen wall.
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INSKEEP: To hear more about the politics of Lancaster's former textile workers you can go to npr.org.