An Ohio Town Is Hard Hit as Leading Industry Moves to China

The New York Times
December 7, 2003
By Joseph Kahn

BRYAN, Ohio — For 40 years workers in Bryan made Etch A Sketch, a children's drawing toy that has outlasted almost all others, and to a significant extent Etch A Sketch made Bryan. This town of about 8,000, tucked into the northwestern corner of Ohio, has a tool and die factory, a tire company and a candy maker. But Etch A Sketch, the signature product of the Ohio Art Company, was Bryan's mascot. It marched in Bryan's parades. It was the mayor's calling card and the town's alter ego. "You tell people you're from Bryan and they look at you blankly," said Carolyn Miller, a longtime assembly line worker at Ohio Art. "You tell them it's the home of Etch A Sketch, and they smile." That was true, at least, until a winter day three years ago, a week before Christmas, when Ohio Art executives called representatives of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers Union into head offices and delivered the news. The Etch A Sketch line was moving to Shenzhen, China. About 100 union employees would lose their jobs. The decision did not catch employees unaware. The mostly female work force had been training Chinese counterparts on the job. Cost pressures had been dragging down profits for years. Production of other Ohio Art toys, including Betty Spaghetty dolls, had already moved to China. But coming as the American economy entered a sharp downturn, the layoffs hit workers, and Bryan, hard. Three years later only a few Etch A Sketch assembly line workers have found other jobs. Most of those who did were lifetime employees of Ohio Art who were rehired in other departments, including a few who got jobs unpacking crates full of Etch A Sketches from China. "Everyone knows the reason these jobs move to China," said Ms. Miller, 64, who now lives on her Social Security and her husband's income. "But when it happens to you, I can tell you, it hurts." In a small town like Bryan, the pain was shared. Bryan's tax base is eroding from the loss of manufacturing and a population drain. The Bryan Times is full of notices of home foreclosures and auctions. The town's central square is in repose. The drugstores, real estate offices and bars look more like relics than marketplaces. The William County Courthouse, a 110-year old Romanesque Revival structure, hints at the loss. Its turrets and towers give it the aura of a fantasy castle. Toy soldiers guard the doors. But the oversize Etch A Sketch that once decorated the courthouse lawn through the Christmas season is gone. Toy making can be overromanticized, of course. Many workers developed muscle stress injuries from repeating the same wrist- and shoulder-twisting motions thousands of times a day on the assembly line. Still, workers said the biggest hole in their lives after Etch A Sketch moved was the death of a community that had bonded over many years. They sat shoulder to shoulder and shared two coffee breaks, the lunch hour and gossip. "I could look at someone's face in the morning and see that something was wrong," said Nancy Bible, an Etch A Sketch lifer. "Before the day was out, we all knew what it was." Nancy Viers, another assembly line worker, followed her grandmother and father to Ohio Art. She said she and many colleagues never expected to have another job. "The company was our family," she said. Sentiments like that may explain why William C. Killgallon, the company's chief executive, still looks hangdog when he talks about the decision to transfer the toy line to China. He cites ineluctable laws of economics. But his eyes water. "It tore our hearts out," he said in an interview in his office. "We ate with these people. We went to church with them. For some of them, this was the only job they ever had."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company