By Marilyn Odendahl, Truth Staff
modendahl@etruth.com
WAKARUSA -- From now on, there will be a group of recreational vehicle workers who will identify themselves as having worked at Monaco Coach before it permanently closed.
The economic downturn has taken jobs from many employees in RV factories across Elkhart County but the Monaco crew know with their former plants mothballed and for sale, their jobs most likely will not be returning. Their former team leaders and supervisors will not be calling them when consumers start buying motorhomes and towables again, and their old spots on the production line or behind a desk will stay empty.
They are starting over and just figuring out what they will say and do after they explain, "I used to work at Monaco."
New Business
Shortly after his day began at 5 a.m. Thursday, Bill Doiron started to get frustrated because he could not find his drill bits, almost demonstrating why his former co-workers nicknamed him Wild Bill.
Then he sat down, drank a cup of coffee, clicked on the radio and took a deep breath. Perhaps he realized this was the first day. The first day he would not be inspecting an RV. The first day he would not walk down a production line or confer with someone from upper management.
Instead the 58-year-old Wakarusa resident will be working for himself at his small-engine repair shop. When Monaco officials told him the plant would be closing, he was devastated and he still feels the pain but he knew he would have to adapt. So, he said, waving to the cluttered garage, the shop is his adaptation.
He had considered returning to school, like many of his colleagues, but sitting at a desk and reading a textbook required a type of concentration he feels he can no longer do. Since the skill of dismantling lawn mowers and making them run again comes more easily, the decision to turn a part-time job into a full-time small business was the only one he believed he could make.
Quick with a smile, Doiron joked that he has three different-sized hammers so he can fix whatever engine is broken.
At the Monaco plant on Nelson Parkway, Doiron worked in quality control, checking such things as the plumbing and electrical systems of the units before they rolled out the door. He enjoyed his job because he liked seeing the finished product and with 15 years in, he wanted to stay another 10.
The shutdown, however, changed his plans as well as the attitude inside the plant. He remembers co-workers not talking as much and an apprehension enveloping the entire facility following the announcement.
Thursday, the day after his job ended at Monaco, Doiron was at his shop before the sun rose, organizing the equipment and tools and chatting with friends who stopped by. Eventually he found the drill bits and, while he remains skeptical that his business ultimately will succeed, he knows it was just the first day.
Complete change
Immediately after she was told the plant was closing and her job was being eliminated, Denise Sexton worried about how she was going to pay the bills and what her family would do for health insurance.
For 10 years she enjoyed her job at Monaco in the whimsical-sounding doors and drawers division. Prior to the announcement of the closures, she and her co-workers suspected something big was going to happen but, at most, they figured the company would cease operations for the entire month of August. Consequently, the employees were stunned by what they heard.
"At 40, I didn't expect to be changing my life," she said. Yet, convinced that the RV business never will return to the powerful industry it was just a few years ago, that is exactly what she is having to do. Seeing gasoline prices rise above $4 a gallon, she does not blame consumers for not wanting to buy the fuel-guzzling units she once helped build and she admitted she does not know Monaco's financial situation or how company officials arrived at their decision. She does wonder if they could have done something more to keep the plants in Elkhart County open.
During the days that followed, Sexton would stop at times and cry. Then she decided letting the situation overwhelm her would not do her or her husband and their two boys any good. Indeed, as terrible as the shutdown was, it gave her the courage to enroll in classes at Ivy Tech. In the spring, with the help of the training grants funded by the state and federal governments for laid-off RV workers, Sexton will begin studying to become a surgical technician.
Health care is steady, dependable work, she concluded.
Before her classes begin, Sexton has been filling her days by working on her family's farm and chaperoning her sons' school field trips. She has also been more attentive to the news and listening to what the politicians are planning to do about energy and the economy.
No one has an answer for high fuel prices, she said. Conversely, her husband has always followed current events and is now questioning why the federal government is paying billions to bail out Wall Street while middle America is suffering. Pointing in the direction of the Monaco plant, John Sexton proclaimed, "Corporate America got away with another one."
As production slowed in the plant and the final day neared, Sexton said she and her co-workers got to know each other better, talking a lot and occasionally playing cards. Just as gradually, her worries about household bills have subsided as she and her husband are confident they will survive. And although she is looking forward to the future, she will miss her former job and her former co-workers.