Resentment
 Laid-off worker cites losing job to Chinese workers in virtual slavery

 BY PAUL B. JOHNSON
 ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
  PLEASANT GARDEN – Cindy Justice’s resentment still sim*mers nearly a year after she found out she’d lose her long*time furniture factory job.
  What adds to her pain is what happened to her work and the jobs of 280 beloved co*workers. It was taken across the globe to be done by people who have little chance to bet*ter their lives, she said.
  Hooker Furniture Corp. closed its Pleasant Garden production plant last year. The company, which also closed a plant in Kernersville in 2003, has been candid in saying that cheaper overseas production costs have led to the shut down of domestic plants.
  For Justice, who worked in customer service at the Pleas*ant Garden factory for 12 years, losing jobs to China means that little positive came out of her devastating experience.
  “That’s a shame that those people over there are worked like slaves,” she said.
  Hooker officials say they maintain humane working conditions when doing busi*ness in China and that they regret moving American jobs offshore. But they say it’s be*cause of global competition and the need for lower produc*tion costs to stay competitive.
  Justice is skeptical.
  The Pleasant Garden plant was the top one in the compa*ny for productivity and prof*itability, she said.
  “But they told us we can’t compete,” Justice said. “You can compete if all your executives are making big bonuses and you would drop those bonuses and keep your plant going.” On a recent sunny after*noon, the 52-year-old woman from Level Cross walks around the deserted Hooker grounds off the main road through the southern Guil*ford County town. Weeds brush against her feet in the former visitors parking area as she gestures to places in the mammoth brick building where she used to work.
  The factory grounds that used to reverberate with the activity of trucks delivering raw materials and taking away finished furnishings now is quiet except for an oc*casional car rolling by or bird chirping on a utility line.
  Justice knows – to the mo*ment – the key dates in her life at Hooker. She started on Aug. 9, 1993, figuring she land*ed the dream job from which she would retire. She was shocked on July 27, 2005, when Hooker executives came to the plant to tell them it would close in a matter of months.
  “They waited until about 3 o’clock, and they told us our plant was shutting down. Most of us, it was a shock,” she said.
  Justice, who was making $13.25 an hour when she lost her job, said she cried for days after the announcement. She has friends who filed for personal bankruptcy after the plant clos*ing and still haven’t recovered.
  Justice manages a conve*nience store and is studying at Randolph Community Col*lege to become a parole or pro*bation officer. She worries that the shut*down of the Pleasant Garden plant symbolizes the slow evaporation of the American middle class.
  “If the American people don’t soon wake up, this coun*try is going to be a Third World country,” she said.  

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