Over 770 jobs will disappear from Cherry Point when Ferndale’s Intalco closes in July.
Both Sen. Ericksen and Rep VanWerven wish to save the jobs at Intalco and Sen. Ericksen has a long history of keeping the Intalco Works open.
29th Of April: “Rep. Van Werven and Sen. Ericksen, fighting to keep Intalco open. These are 700 family-wage jobs we can’t lose!” #saveintalco from Rep Van Werven:
Sen Doug Ericksen 42nd District Republican
“This is a very difficult time and concerning situation for Whatcom County. My heart goes out to the working families at Intalco, However, this is not over. I’m going to be fighting alongside Sen. Doug Ericksen and other elected officials at all levels of government and will be exhausting all options to keep Intalco open.” See the full statement here.
Representative Shewmake in an announcement of a townhall for May 4th says:
“The announcement that Alcoa Corporation will close the Intalco Works smelter and cut 700 jobs is absolutely devastating. I’ll be doing everything I can to make sure that Intalco workers have every option possible to continue to work. I’ve already scheduled two digital events to find solutions and will continue these discussions.”
At a Rally; called partisan by the non-partisan mayor of Ferndale; Union Shop Stewards; normally identified with Democratic Party issues; stood beside a Republican Senator and Representative; to talk about the effect of the closure and the work to find ways to keep workers working at the manufacturing facility. No such leadership from the city whose tax collections have profited greatly over the years. Next we will probably see the Mayor of Ferndale asking for money for City projects from State Taxpayers instead of the being able to generate funding from the cities own tax base.
Not much hope expressed by Democratic partisans in keeping the plant open and in former Democratic Party chair’s Natalie McClendon’s words “it is past time we work together to find diversity in our local economy.
Of Course Democrats discount the huge subsidies given to Boeing, Amazon and Microsoft in B & O tax rates. The Ferndale Mayor seems to have the same political view.
The Ferndale School District, seems to understand the problem; as they face both local levy cuts in a November election and student allocation money for the district as students whose family members depend on Intalco move out of the area to get better jobs and Ferndale students go with them.
Since China subsidized businesses have created well over 100 smelters in China and there are only 7 left in the US. Are we as the former chair of democratic party infers going to allow China to control Aluminum (a key commodity in defense contracts) in the world the way they have been allowed to control ventilator production; mask production; face shield production; medicine production and on and on because we have shut those industries here. You decide.
See the related article from Jim McKinney on strategic commondities here.
See the Fourth Corner Article on the closing April 22nd Here.
Let’s think outside the box on this. Is Alcoa still producing Aluminum the same way with the same equipment they did when they opened in the 60’s. Is this part of their reason not being able to compete? The Nimitz class carriers required a crew of 3200. The new Gerald Ford class requires about 2600. Two totally different Carriers designed for the same purpose. One has early 70’s technology the other has modern technology. IMHO. This place needs to be razed and redone. Which it won’t. Eventually in some cases the equipment you are using is really expensive to operate since there are no parts to fix them.
Natalie makes a valid point that I Hope is not partisan. We can’t tell a private firm in this season we are in to finance a money pit. Loosing jobs is Horrible. Loosing a Tax base, funding for school projects and a high grade product is devastating. As far as Amazon and Boeing. They are keeping up with the times with their infrastructure and process. Maybe to some degree Intalco was as well. In the end it’s vary costly to keep up with China and their cheap more modern Smelting system. Cheap power and tax breaks won’t cut it if your system is aging beyond its life.