Most people don’t pine for the days when you could work on the assembly line at a factory in Kearny. But after chatting with some Western Electric Retirees, it began to seem like a pretty fabulous gig.
There’s so much love and loyalty for the company that, more than 30 years after the plant closed, its retirement group was able to muster about 30 former workers on a cold, drizzly May afternoon.
Busy Signal
At its zenith after World War II, Western Electric’s Kearny Works was the busiest manufacturing plant in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company’s vast network. Many of its 24,000 workers came from nearby Bayonne.
Robert Hanley, writing in the New York Times on Jan. 29, 1983, offers an excellent snapshot of a dying enterprise in a dying era. The hook was that the company’s general manager had just announced that the plant would close over the next three years. At the time, there were about 4,000 employees working in a huge complex on the northern shores of Newark Bay.
The 145-acre plant was surrounded by oil refineries, truck depots, chemical plants, and tank farms.
A worker told Hanley, “the days of smokestacks. The days of factories are over.”
Not only that. The irony was that this behemoth of a company “used to make the best telephone in the world,” according to a 27-year veteran, and no one could have predicted that three decades later just about everybody on earth would have a four-inch phone in their pocket.
Static on the Line
Among the factors blamed for the shutdown were Reaganomics, foreign competition, and a deep recession. As General Manager Ron Butterfield told the Times, “The worldwide recession has had a severe effect on demand for telecommunications products,” and Kearny Works was at 50 percent production capacity.
The following year would herald one of the biggest shakeups in telecommunications history. On Jan. 1, 1984, AT&T would shed its 22 local telephone companies, igniting an era of stiff competition.
According to Hanley, Butterfield vowed to try and retain employees, transfer them elsewhere in the Bell System, or help them find new jobs.
Hanging Up
At the beginning of 1983, unemployment in Hudson County was at 14 percent. Employees at Kearny Works were spending their combined payroll of $128 million in stores in the surrounding area and in their own communities of Bayonne, Jersey City, and Newark.
One local bar owner told the Times that the plant generated 20 percent of his business.
Though many workers had voted for Reagan, one veteran employee said, “Nobody figured he’d knock the block off the blue-collar worker.”
Another veteran predicted, “In 10 years you won’t be able to buy an American telephone.”
Grandma Bell
In March 1984, Kearny Works employee G.V. Apgar put together “A Brief History of the Kearny Works.” After World War II, he wrote, “The Kearny Tract had become a city in itself.” He went on to catalog its amenities: two company-owned locomotives, a bus that ran between buildings, an on-premise garage with car mechanics, a fire truck, ambulance, and a well-equipped hospital.
Employees spent their lunch hours at the library or shopping in the Wekearny Club stores, which included a jeweler, shoemaker and appliance retailer. The club provided space and equipment for card players, ping pong, chess, and a rifle range. Outdoor recreation included softball, horse shoes, parks for strolling, and a fishpond.
A full-time gardener maintained the shrubbery and lawns, and a hothouse supplied cut flowers and plants for the offices.
Hello and Good-Bye
At the Fourth Street Senior Center, Western Electric Retirees President Eileen Colacino brings the meeting to order. Secretary Frank Kotula reads a prayer honoring veterans for Memorial Day, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, the recognition of members with May birthdays, and a 50/50 raffle. To the left of the stage is a Christmas tree with lights twinkling, bedecked with pink and white flowers. Member John Vida is serving coffee and “tea cakes,” which are delicious and look and taste a lot like scones.
Just about everyone in the room had worked for the company for at least three decades. They were layout operators, bookkeepers, and customer-service representatives; they were in the cafeteria, accounts payable, payroll, and finance; they wired and assembled “miniature relays,” repaired small parts, supported the engineering department, and made circuit cable boards.
Barbara and Michael Gawason met at the Kearny Works and have been married for 50 years.
James Vida, John’s twin, likes to say that they worked at the plant 33 years, seven months, and 22 days, which corresponds to their birthday on July 22, 1933.
Bill Thomas reveals that they called the plant “The Country Club.”
All the members related that at lunch hour, they made ceramics, “danced to whatever records were popular,” played softball, bowled, and dressed up on Halloween.
“I loved it,” said Antoinette Bugeja. “It was wonderful. People were respectful. It was a great place. The people were great, there were no fights, everybody got along.” When you retired, she said, people wrote in your “memory book.” “They wished you luck. The boss would hate to see you go.”
A highlight of the Kearny Works’ year was the crowning of the “Hello Charley” Queen. The derivation of the name is a little complicated. Suffice it to say, it has to do with a beloved benefit-services employee.
President Colacino said that in the early 1980s, 1,000 members would come to a Retirees meeting.
Things have changed. “There was a lot of loyalty,” said Estelle Landisis. “Now everybody’s independent, not in groups. They don’t talk anymore. The cell phone is the worst thing ever invented.”
Though there were a lot of smart people in the room, I didn’t spot a single smartphone.
But Estelle Landisis has a 70-year-old rotary phone and a wooden telephone booth in her house.—BLP