By Angie Herrington
Staff Writer
FORT PAYNE, Ala. —; At 17, Glenda Holkem entered adulthood working in the industry that earned this city the title of “sock capital of the world.”
Now, at 45, she is taking her career in a whole new direction after the sock mill where she worked closed down last year.
“I’m looking at it as a new opportunity, and something more stable,” Mrs. Holkem said about the health care classes she is taking at Northeast Alabama Community College.
Despite a couple of small victories protecting against foreign competition, the country’s sock industry shows signs of unraveling since the passage last summer of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, some industry observers said.
Jim Schollaert, executive director of Made In USA Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., that represents the interests of the domestic sock industry, said there has been a nearly 50 percent increase in shipments of socks from Honduras during the first six months of this year.
“We have to hope the country comes to its senses and realizes we cannot continue to enter into these free trade agreements,” he said.
Todd Tucker, research director at Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that studies trade deals, said CAFTA has hit the textile and apparel industry nationwide.
“We’re finding that almost every week another factory is moving to a CAFTA country or shutting down completely,” he said.
However, Charles Cole with Alabama Footwear in Fort Payne, who is considered a leading voice for the sock industry, said CAFTA has not been the death blow here that some expected.
President Bush signed CAFTA into law a year ago this week, following a hard fight in Congress. The U.S. House narrowly passed it by a vote of 217-215. Meanwhile, protection against unfair competition has come in the form of a limit on sock imports from China that will last until December 2008.
Mr. Cole said the industry also is benefiting from a law passed a year and a half ago that requires every package of socks sold in the United States to have the country of origin listed on the front. The hope is consumers will choose American-made socks.
“I feel like the worst is over and we should be optimistic about what’s coming down the road ahead,” Mr. Cole said.
Fort Payne still is worthy of its “sock capital of the world” recognition, he said. The town’s sock mills boasted about 8,000 workers at their peak between 2000 and 2002, Mr. Cole said. Today, that number is roughly 4,500.
JOBS LOST AND GAINED
In January, Russell Corp. announced a major restructuring that will include the elimination of 220 jobs at DeSoto Mills in Fort Payne before the end of the year.
Russell spokeswoman Nancy Young said the move is necessary for the company to be competitive in the global textile and apparel market. The changes will result in the company’s producing all of its socks in offshore manufacturing facilities and will allow Russell’s new facility in Honduras to expand, she said.
“CAFTA is the reason we’re expanding operations in Honduras,” Ms. Young said.
Prewett Associated Mills in Fort Payne announced two weeks after Russell made its plans known that it would consolidate its 17 companies under one corporate roof. The move will allow the company to compete globally, a news release stated.
Company officials said employees whose jobs were consolidated were offered other positions. New employees are being hired, with some 40 to 45 brought on board in the last two months, they said.
Jimmy Durham, executive director of the DeKalb County Economic Development Authority, said there are 82 sock mills in the area today, down from 125 four years ago. But he said the area’s economy “is booming” despite these numbers because other plants have absorbed the sock industry’s job losses.
For example, he said Rainsville Technology Inc., which makes plastic component parts for Honda, recently expanded its operation.
“We’re trying to diversify our work force so we’re not loaded with one industry,” Mr. Durham said.
He said the county’s sales tax revenues increased more than 10 percent this calendar year. And preliminary unemployment statistics from the Alabama Department of Labor show the unemployment rate for DeKalb County from June 2005 to June 2006 dropped from 4.9 percent to 4.1 percent. Alabama’s jobless rate last month was 3.6 percent.
Employees at the Fort Payne Career Center said the area’s unstable sock industry has kept them busy.
Marsha Amos, coordinator for CareerLink, a program that provides on-the-job training, said the program has placed about 230 people in jobs this year, many of whom were laid off from sock mills.
“Some of the people dropped out of high school to go and work,” she said. “We heard that story over and over.”
Margaret Childers, 74, said she is working to get her GED after she was laid off from a sock mill in October. She said she dropped out of school when she was in eighth grade and started working in a sock mill at age 16. Ms. Childers said earning her GED seemed like a logical move after she lost her job.
“I just thought I would get it,” she said, adding she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of working again.
PROTECTING INDUSTRY
U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., who had expressed concerns that CAFTA would cause Fort Payne to lose jobs, voted in favor of it after President Bush’s administration sent a letter to him outlining measures it would take to protect the sock industry.
A letter dated July 27, 2005, from U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and then-U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, stated the department would be “very pro-active in initiating a sock safeguard if the situation were to warrant it.”
A safeguard would reimpose tariffs on sock imports for three years to keep other countries from gaining greater access to the U.S. market.
The letter also included an offer to pursue changes to CAFTA, including a 10-year phase-out of tariffs for sock imports from Central America. Such a measure would mean tariffs would remain on socks for five years, and then would phase out during the second five years of the agreement.
None of the measures has gone into effect, but Stephen Norton, spokesman for the U.S. trade representative, said “it is a priority that we fulfill our promises.” U.S. trade officials said they are continuing to monitor the number of sock imports from Central America to see if a sock safeguard is warranted.
Mr. Cole said he is “disappointed” none of the promises in the letter to Rep. Aderholt has been met, but he thinks that will still happen. Rep. Aderholt said in a statement that he is working to have the Bush administration initiate the sock safeguards.
“Implementation of safeguards ... sends a signal that we are serious about having fair competition,” he said.
E-mail Angie Herrington at aherrington@timesfreepress.com
Staff Photo by Dan Henry
Alabama Footwear knitter Yaricsalda Melendez, right, sorts open-toed socks for turn-sew operator Daui Bouilla to seal at the Fort Payne, Ala., manufacturing plant, where 720,000 socks are made each week.
Staff Writer
FORT PAYNE, Ala. —; At 17, Glenda Holkem entered adulthood working in the industry that earned this city the title of “sock capital of the world.”
Now, at 45, she is taking her career in a whole new direction after the sock mill where she worked closed down last year.
“I’m looking at it as a new opportunity, and something more stable,” Mrs. Holkem said about the health care classes she is taking at Northeast Alabama Community College.
Despite a couple of small victories protecting against foreign competition, the country’s sock industry shows signs of unraveling since the passage last summer of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, some industry observers said.
Jim Schollaert, executive director of Made In USA Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., that represents the interests of the domestic sock industry, said there has been a nearly 50 percent increase in shipments of socks from Honduras during the first six months of this year.
“We have to hope the country comes to its senses and realizes we cannot continue to enter into these free trade agreements,” he said.
Todd Tucker, research director at Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that studies trade deals, said CAFTA has hit the textile and apparel industry nationwide.
“We’re finding that almost every week another factory is moving to a CAFTA country or shutting down completely,” he said.
However, Charles Cole with Alabama Footwear in Fort Payne, who is considered a leading voice for the sock industry, said CAFTA has not been the death blow here that some expected.
President Bush signed CAFTA into law a year ago this week, following a hard fight in Congress. The U.S. House narrowly passed it by a vote of 217-215. Meanwhile, protection against unfair competition has come in the form of a limit on sock imports from China that will last until December 2008.
Mr. Cole said the industry also is benefiting from a law passed a year and a half ago that requires every package of socks sold in the United States to have the country of origin listed on the front. The hope is consumers will choose American-made socks.
“I feel like the worst is over and we should be optimistic about what’s coming down the road ahead,” Mr. Cole said.
Fort Payne still is worthy of its “sock capital of the world” recognition, he said. The town’s sock mills boasted about 8,000 workers at their peak between 2000 and 2002, Mr. Cole said. Today, that number is roughly 4,500.
JOBS LOST AND GAINED
In January, Russell Corp. announced a major restructuring that will include the elimination of 220 jobs at DeSoto Mills in Fort Payne before the end of the year.
Russell spokeswoman Nancy Young said the move is necessary for the company to be competitive in the global textile and apparel market. The changes will result in the company’s producing all of its socks in offshore manufacturing facilities and will allow Russell’s new facility in Honduras to expand, she said.
“CAFTA is the reason we’re expanding operations in Honduras,” Ms. Young said.
Prewett Associated Mills in Fort Payne announced two weeks after Russell made its plans known that it would consolidate its 17 companies under one corporate roof. The move will allow the company to compete globally, a news release stated.
Company officials said employees whose jobs were consolidated were offered other positions. New employees are being hired, with some 40 to 45 brought on board in the last two months, they said.
Jimmy Durham, executive director of the DeKalb County Economic Development Authority, said there are 82 sock mills in the area today, down from 125 four years ago. But he said the area’s economy “is booming” despite these numbers because other plants have absorbed the sock industry’s job losses.
For example, he said Rainsville Technology Inc., which makes plastic component parts for Honda, recently expanded its operation.
“We’re trying to diversify our work force so we’re not loaded with one industry,” Mr. Durham said.
He said the county’s sales tax revenues increased more than 10 percent this calendar year. And preliminary unemployment statistics from the Alabama Department of Labor show the unemployment rate for DeKalb County from June 2005 to June 2006 dropped from 4.9 percent to 4.1 percent. Alabama’s jobless rate last month was 3.6 percent.
Employees at the Fort Payne Career Center said the area’s unstable sock industry has kept them busy.
Marsha Amos, coordinator for CareerLink, a program that provides on-the-job training, said the program has placed about 230 people in jobs this year, many of whom were laid off from sock mills.
“Some of the people dropped out of high school to go and work,” she said. “We heard that story over and over.”
Margaret Childers, 74, said she is working to get her GED after she was laid off from a sock mill in October. She said she dropped out of school when she was in eighth grade and started working in a sock mill at age 16. Ms. Childers said earning her GED seemed like a logical move after she lost her job.
“I just thought I would get it,” she said, adding she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of working again.
PROTECTING INDUSTRY
U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., who had expressed concerns that CAFTA would cause Fort Payne to lose jobs, voted in favor of it after President Bush’s administration sent a letter to him outlining measures it would take to protect the sock industry.
A letter dated July 27, 2005, from U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and then-U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, stated the department would be “very pro-active in initiating a sock safeguard if the situation were to warrant it.”
A safeguard would reimpose tariffs on sock imports for three years to keep other countries from gaining greater access to the U.S. market.
The letter also included an offer to pursue changes to CAFTA, including a 10-year phase-out of tariffs for sock imports from Central America. Such a measure would mean tariffs would remain on socks for five years, and then would phase out during the second five years of the agreement.
None of the measures has gone into effect, but Stephen Norton, spokesman for the U.S. trade representative, said “it is a priority that we fulfill our promises.” U.S. trade officials said they are continuing to monitor the number of sock imports from Central America to see if a sock safeguard is warranted.
Mr. Cole said he is “disappointed” none of the promises in the letter to Rep. Aderholt has been met, but he thinks that will still happen. Rep. Aderholt said in a statement that he is working to have the Bush administration initiate the sock safeguards.
“Implementation of safeguards ... sends a signal that we are serious about having fair competition,” he said.
E-mail Angie Herrington at aherrington@timesfreepress.com
Staff Photo by Dan Henry
Alabama Footwear knitter Yaricsalda Melendez, right, sorts open-toed socks for turn-sew operator Daui Bouilla to seal at the Fort Payne, Ala., manufacturing plant, where 720,000 socks are made each week.
