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When Lewes’ Hocker Manufacturing Co. employees learned in early January the plant would close the last day of the month and more than 20 employees would be left jobless, the news came as a shock.
“We were doing orders – turning orders away. Toward the end we were really busy. We don’t understand why they closed the doors,” said former employee Tammy Abele.
Abele, 41, worked at Hocker for 20 years and had experience operating every piece of manufacturing equipment in the plant. Abele’s friend and former Hocker coworker, Pauline Anderson, 55, had been with the company for 16 years. Both thought their jobs with Hocker were secure and neither saw the plant’s closing as something that could happen so quickly.
Hocker, an industrial brush producer, started in Philadelphia in 1890. The company moved to Lewes a few years later. In January 2007, Hocker was purchased by Lancaster, Pa.-based National Novelty Brush Co. – NNBC.
“When they [NNBC] took over I figured they would close it down, but I thought they would have taken at least three years before they did. It was a big shock,” said Anderson.
Richard Seavy, NNBC president and CEO, said the nation’s slump in housing sales and new construction had reduced demand for Hocker’s primary product – a metal cap with an attached dauber used to apply solvents and adhesives to PVC plumbing pipes.
Seavy said National also produced the dauber and cap in Lancaster and, economically, it didn’t make sense for the company to manufacture the item in two locations.
He said the company was also up against strong competition from Chinese manufacturers producing the same product.
In early February, NNBC employees disassembled Hocker’s manufacturing equipment, loaded it into semi rigs and transported it to Lancaster.
The move marked the end of Hocker’s more than 100 years of manufacturing industrial brushes in Lewes.
Hocker employees have experienced what labor and economy experts say is an accelerating national trend. According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, since 2001, more than 2.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States have been eliminated – most shipped overseas where workers are paid miniscule wages, plant conditions are abysmal and benefits, such as health insurance, don’t exist.
American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) studies also indicate that American corporations have increasingly shipped the jobs of well-paid blue-collar workers abroad. A similar trend is also being seen with high-paying white-collar jobs with work done by various engineering and medical professionals going to companies in developing nations.
The labor department’s list of top 10 occupations likely to show significant growth in the coming decade typically pay poorly – customer service, food preparation and service, office clerking and security jobs head the list.
Abele and Anderson said finding a job that pays as well as the manufacturing positions they lost has been tough.
“I’ve looked throughout the manufacturing sector and there’s not much in Sussex County. You have to go to Milford or farther north. A lot of jobs pay a lot less money and you have to start from the bottom all over again,” said Abele.
At least one Hocker employee had worked at the plant for 25 years. “The bad part is, a couple of them are 60 to 63 years old. They don’t know what they’re going to do,” Anderson said.
She said a promise made by National Brush to give jobs to Hocker employees willing to relocate to Lancaster turned out to be empty.
“They really didn’t give us the option. They said they only had a couple of openings and they needed to know immediately if we wanted them. Most of the positions up there are only temporary,” she said.
She said Seavy visited the plant for 10 minutes on Jan. 9, to announce that it would close at the end of the month.
“The next day they called down and said we had to get rid of five employees. They started from the bottom and got rid of five people that Friday. We were all scared. We didn’t know if we were going to make it to the 31st,” said Anderson.
National provided one month’s severance pay to remaining employees. Most also qualify for unemployment insurance compensation.
But, say the women, without jobs they’ll have less cash but with the same constantly rising expenses.
“Even with unemployment I’m going to make $100 a week less than I had been making,” said Abele, who has a school-age son. And along with the job loss also came the loss of health insurance.
“You can pay for COBRA [Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act] health insurance at $364 a month. I had to go a month without insurance. For the whole month you’re nervous about whether you’re going to get sick,” said Abele.
Both women are married and have working husbands. If not for them the women said they couldn’t have afforded health insurance.
“But there are at least five people who worked there who didn’t have spouses. They’ve probably had to go without insurance because they couldn’t afford COBRA,” said Anderson.
Abele and Anderson said a handful of former coworkers have found new jobs – cleaning, welding, as a gym instructor and in manufacturing. The welder and gym instructor are men.
“Most of the employees at Hocker were women; only about six of them were men,” said Abele. “Not only did we lose our jobs, but we were all family there. We’re trying to keep up with each other. We’re meeting once in awhile to have lunch,” she said. Abele and Anderson said former Hocker President Greg Wood, who continued working as a consultant under National’s ownership, has gone the extra mile for the now jobless workers.
“He called a friend with Dogfish Head Brewery and their human resource lady came in on her own time and helped us. She went over our resumes and did mock interviews with us. It was nice,” said Abele.
Both women, who live near Georgetown, said their resumes are circulating on the internet and on file with local businesses. They’re looking for an offer and hoping for a call.
“You can’t get upset and worry about it because it’s not going to do you any good,” said Anderson.
“That’s what you tell me every time you talk to me,” said Abele.
Contact Henry Evans at hevans@capegazette.com
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