/Unitedbank
/Eedition

what is the legacy of the william carter co. here...

Posted by
Walter Geiger
in Geiger's Counter
Thursday, April 2. 2009
Comments (20)
is it of a proud industry that long put food on the tables of local families and sent their kids to college or has that legacy been tainted by closings, shutdowns and job cuts?

current and former carter's employees are invited to comment. these comments - particularly those bearing names - will be used in our print and online coverage.
Bookmark and Share
Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry
No Trackbacks
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)
#1 Anonymous on 04/02/09 at 06:31 PM
Work little piggy!
#2 Anonymous on 04/02/09 at 06:36 PM
Carter's offered a good, honest job for those that were willing to work hard. It's so sad to think it will no longer be in Barnesville but I guess the writing has been on the wall since NAFTA gave companies the push to take their manufacturing away from the U.S.
#3 H B on 04/02/09 at 08:20 PM
I worked at Carters after I finished Junior College at Gordon Military College, and was able to complete the Junior year, while working at Carters. I later finished my senior year at West Georgia College in Carrollton. (Now called the State University of West Georgia.
If it hadnt been for Carters, that opportunity may not have presented itself to me. I was from a single Parent Family, when I was that age, and there wasnt alot of money left for further college, after Gordon.
Thanks Carters!!
#4 Anonymous on 04/03/09 at 06:13 AM
I was the first in my family to go to college. My parents and grandparents worked at Carter's. They were loyal to their company because they depended on it to feed us but I hated it for what it did to them. My mother could hardly move her fingers after she retired because of repeatative motion at the sewing machine. My dad died of lung problems - probably a combination of breathing the cotton dust and smoking.
#5 Anonymous on 04/03/09 at 09:56 AM
We were told NOT to speak to the media in regards to this closing. Not sure why...anybody care to take a stab?
#6 Walter Geiger on 04/03/09 at 10:13 AM
what are they going to do - eliminate your job?
#7 Anonymous on 04/03/09 at 10:49 AM
Carters suffered from a poor work force pool here, as with other such companies. The American people down here are just lazy and the turnover rate was high, which in turn affects production #'s!
#8 Anonymous on 04/03/09 at 11:49 AM
If you speak to the media your fired. If you don't.....your fired anyways.
#9 Anonymous on 04/03/09 at 10:26 PM
It may affect your severance (if any). They told us the same thing when Yamaha closed.
#10 lynda on 04/04/09 at 07:48 AM
I grew up in Barnesville in the 1950s. My mother and most of my aunts and uncles worked at Carters. I'm sure most local families in Barnesville had at least one family member employed by Carters during that time. Because a lot of women in Barnesville during the fifties were not college educated, I guess Carters was a decent place to work outside the home and bring in an income to help out the family..
#11 Paul on 04/04/09 at 11:36 AM
Bull****. I had kin that worked there, and I knew a lot of other people that worked there, and none of them were lazy. True, some people are not cut out for production work; I saw a lot of turnover in production workers at Aldora, but to say "American people down here are just lazy" is demeaning.

Carter's simply moved production offshore to take advantage of cheap foreign labor, which was a result of NAFTA, signed by Clinton in '94, which was spearheaded by the American auto industry. We all see how that turned out. Not too good!
#12 al coleman on 04/04/09 at 08:49 PM
My mother also worked @ carters during the 50,s
and at that time was a super company / sorry to hear that Barneville is loosing them. Her name was Jewell Coleman.

alfred coleman
class of 61
milner high school
#13 H B on 04/05/09 at 09:56 AM
Paul, I agree with you. My mother worked hard and did very well for the time at Carters. She kept food on the table. I find no fault with the working population of the 50's and early 60's at Carters, I knew most of them.
NAFTA is a major reason we are in the mess we are in, in my opinion, at this time. It encouraged everyone to go off shore, and use cheap labor.
Most of the Bill Clinton promises on this issue never happened.
We get to pay for it now.
#14 Sandy Darden Rogerson on 04/05/09 at 12:50 PM
I worked there. My husband worked there. My son worked there. My daughter worked there. Many of my friend's parents work there. I was raised by factory workers. It's depressing to me to see all the empty textile mills in the U.S. today. It leaves me with a very lonely feeling. My best memories are of those days in the 60's when the mills were all in full swing. MANY people were employed in these mills and the economy was good before people got so greedy. AND they certainly were not LAZY. We got up at 5 AM, worked till 5 PM and sometimes even on Saturdays and some Sundays. No cell phones allowed. No absences without a doctor's excuse. And no more than 3 absences allowed in a six week period of time. People were not called to the phone during work hours for frivolous reasons. No, these workers were not Lazy by any means. These people were the back bone of America. They had to learn to have strong self discipline. Something that seams to be lacking in many people today. It also seems that people had more sense of family. Things are more in turmoil now.
So.... my opinion is that it is a legacy of a proud industry that long put food on the tables of local families and sent their kids to college. The death of Carter's is a sad occasion for me.
#15 Sandy Darden Rogerson on 04/05/09 at 05:49 PM
How are they going to know who you are if you are signed in as anonymous?
#16 O.B. on 04/05/09 at 10:32 PM
Paul, I will have to disagree with both you and H.B. on NAFTA in that it was not all of Bill Clinton's fault just because he was the president of our country, Newt Gingrich was the speaker of the house and the house was controlled by the Republican Party. Why did our so called good friend Newt Gingrich do this to our country? Newt and Bill must have made some type of agreement to screw our country..
#17 Anonymous on 04/05/09 at 10:39 PM
Alfred,

I remember you well. When your father-Cooter, mother-Jewell, brother-Clay and sister-Sandra moved to Barnesville, y'all lived next door to me. You dad drove a bakery truck and y'all had a '55 or '56 mercury and he let me drive it one weekend and we went to Perk's in Thomaston...Do you know who I am? Your first cousin was my second cousin and his initials for his full name was T.R.M.

Send an e-mail to News@Barnesville.com c/o Walter Geiger and ask him for my e-mail address. I will tell him to give it to you..
#18 r.t on 04/07/09 at 12:48 PM
So stupid, you probably would not work in a pie factory tastin!!!!!!!!!! Bet ya own welfare and these taxpayers paying for your internet service. Get a life!!!!!!!!!!!!
#19 Sheila Tolley on 04/08/09 at 02:24 AM
Carter's did not suffer from a poor work force pool but Anonymous #6 evidently came from a poor gene pool. In case you other Anons are from a different tribe,NO ONE CAN TELL YOU NOT TO TALK TO THE MEDIA IN THE USA. NOT YET. Just tell the truth and tell it LOUD brother, while you still can in America!!!And just in case the Idiot that told you that is reading this, assuming he/she can read. We have the right to remain silent when we CHOOSE to use it but we have Freedom of speech and Freedom of the Press
in the United States, you ignoramus.
#20 Tom Rauch on 04/08/09 at 10:20 AM
NAFTA was thought up and pushed during the elder Bush's administration, and Democrats and Republican's alike were behind it for various reasons. It happened to hit the desk while Clinton was in and Clinton fully embraced it, but he was no part of creating it.

While we were doing NAFTA, I was working at divisions of Prime Instruments. I was involved in design and management, and related to that was assembly cost and marketing, just as I was at Zenith when we started having trade issues.

The problem was never workers. When we had some bad workers as non-unionized plants we got rid of them. When we dealt with unions it was a bit more difficult, but we could always find a way to get rid of them. Overall the workforce was very good and very productive and wanted to do things correctly.

The problems we had were in our Government. At Zenith the Japanese were dumping consumer electronics below cost, and below the adjusted cost of the same items in Japan. This forced us to outsource to other countries where they paid no health or retirement benefits, and where they had no environmental restrictions.

I suppose we could have asked workers to move into one room shacks, not send kids to college, and to take $0.75 an hour wage but it probably would not have worked.

We sued the Japanese for dumping and won in court, but our own Government would not help us collector or enforce trade rules we had to follow.

At Prime we marketed heavily into Europe, then Europe started a trade alliance in Europe. They created standards that required passing in European test labs while giving a blanket exemption to members of the European Community or allowing them to "self-test". They established a trade zone that among countries with almost equal wealth.

Our action was to partner up with Mexico, a country absolutely unable to buy what we produce and with no health care, retirement, or living standard for workers.

The end result of this could never have been anything but a loss in the American standard of living. Money and jobs are like water, and flow toward the lowest level of standards allowed.

We have no one to blame for this except our own Government. It started long ago with earlier administrations and was really kicked into a run by Reagan, and was accelerated by Democrats and Republicans alike since then.

While the Europeans were smart enough to trade with equal partners, we were dumb enough to partner with poor nations. We were dumb enough to not enforce agreements we had.

We have no one to blame but ourselves and our government system for the loss of manufacturing. It isn't the people, it is what the people allowed to happen. Reagan announced over and over again how we were going to shift from a manufacturing economy to a consumer and service based economy. His dream came true, and we spend more and produce less every year. We consume from overseas in exchange for our wealth.

We have taken the United States to a position where we now pay the Communist Chinese to let us work for them, and we rejoice in what they hand back to us.
Only registered users may comment on stories. Please login or register to post comments. Your browser must support cookies.
The author does not allow comments to this entry
Copyright © 2008-2011 The Herald-Gazette