Community Disorganizers: Friendly Neighborhood Kochs Don’t Care About Your Neighborhood

March 11, 2016

On March 6, 2006, the community of Gaylord, Minnesota suffered an enormous loss courtesy of Charles and David Koch. Over two-hundred residents lost their jobs when Koch Industries subsidiary Georgia Pacific decided to close its Gaylord plant — the largest of its kind east of the Mississippi, according to the Gaylor Herald Times.

Georgia Pacific manufactures wood, adhesives, fertilizer, cardboard, and paper products — including Dixie cups and Brawny paper towels, among other things. This particular Georgia Pacific facility in Gaylord was a particle board plant. But, most importantly, it was a community staple — and had been since it produced its first wood panel on April 16, 1965.

The economic impact of the Georgia Pacific plant’s closure was devastating. Not only were 155 suppliers impacted by its shut-down, but there was also the “$8 million in [lost] annual wages paid directly to” employees in the community — and a “secondary impact of $4 million annually on other area wages,” according to an Otsego County Economic Alliance estimate. At least one family was forced to move out of Gaylord after the closing — Chris Harrier didn’t have a choice when he was laid off after, by the Herald Times’s account, 28 years at the plant.

Otsego County’s unemployment rate was 7.1% at the time of the plant’s 2006 closing; three years later, it had jumped to 14.7%, according to the Herald Times.

“It was years of a hurting Gaylord economy,” according to WPBN-TV’s ten-year retrospective on the Georgia Pacific plant closing.

The March 2006 factory closing happened just months after the Kochs agreed to buy Georgia Pacific in November 2005. The closure was part of a purposeful streamlining of the Georgia Pacific’s operations to cut costs and boost profits.

All that to state the obvious: Charles and David Kochs like to pretend they care about working families, but, for them, everything comes down to their bottom line. 

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