An Industrial Town Stares Change in the Face

Mondello, the Delphi worker, leaned toward the door with her young niece by her side. She lives just outside of Lockport -- out in the country, where it's a little quieter. Mondello, a working mother, was dressed in jeans and a sweater, hair cut to shoulder length. "I love my job," she said. "I take pride in my work and my job. I know a lot of people there do."

She said her standard of living has gone up drastically since she started at Delphi five years ago. This Christmas, she is taking her family to Arizona to visit her teenage son, the first time she's been able to afford the trip. Her daughter gets a $1,500 scholarship from Delphi to attend Buffalo State College. Mondello has bought three cars since starting at the plant; the last one was her first new car. "I've never been able to buy a brand-new car, and I won't if I only make $9 or $10 an hour," she said.

Mondello is trying to remain calm about the future. It helps that she's been through this before. From 1994 to 1999, she had a job making saw blades before the company closed up and moved to the South. She then worked as an assistant manager at a Yellow Goose convenience store. She wonders if she'll lose her job in the reorganization. Right now, she's trying to live by the upbeat motto "Life is too short to dwell on the bad things."

A Heritage in Doubt

For nearly all of its history, Lockport's fortunes have been heavily tied to America's industrialization, brought to town when the Erie Canal opened in 1825. The canal was the country's major infrastructure project of its era, forging trade links between the east and west by connecting the port of New York City to Chicago and the other ports of the Great Lakes.

Lockport gets its name from the canal locks near Main Street, which raise and lower boats along two 25-foot steps as they pass through the city. Industries came and went, some slowly dying out as businesses moved overseas or new technology made the old ways obsolete. Today, the Lockport section of the canal is a tourist attraction.

The Lockport auto parts plant goes back to 1910, and most people in town refer to it as "Harrison's," after Herbert Champion Harrison, who was one of the first to apply the assembly line system used to cheaply mass-produce cars to the process of making parts.

Today, the Lockport plant falls under Delphi's thermal and interior systems division. Workers make radiators and condensers, vent and duct work that sits mostly underneath the dashboard. Delphi says 90 percent of the parts built at the plant go into GM-built vehicles. Local officials estimate that the facility pumps as much as $500 million into the Lockport area annually. Six hundred smaller companies in the region count on Delphi as a customer of their products.

Delphi was created in 1995 as the consolidated parts division of GM. The division was spun off into a stand-alone company in 1999. The deal was supposed to allow GM to refocus on designing and assembling cars and trucks. Delphi would be free to focus on making parts and pursuing contracts from other automakers. Delphi has struggled to make a profit, accumulating $5.5 billion in losses since 2000, $1.5 billion of which was in the first three quarters of this year.

Miller, the Delphi chief executive, says the labor costs that Delphi inherited at the time of its spinoff leave it at a substantial competitive disadvantage, particularly as more auto parts production moves overseas into countries where labor is cheap. In frank language, Miller has said workers can't be blamed for pursuing the American dream. He said the companies have made promises of job security, health care and retirement pensions that they simply can no longer afford to pay. "All of us have been caught short by fast-changing economics," he said.

In Lockport, the season of canal pleasure boaters is coming to a close. The lock keepers will soon drain the canal locks. Last week, Mondello was gearing up for another Saturday shift at the plant. At work, she sees no signs of GM or Delphi cutting back. GM is ratcheting up production for a new line of sport-utility vehicles, using parts built at the Lockport facility. The extra work on weekends makes Mondello and other workers skeptical of Delphi's cry of insolvency. "There's been no slowdown," she said.