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THE TRANSFORMATION RUNS BACKWARD · 1969 TO 1983
The slow leak: The end began a decade before the famous closing. Between 1969 and 1982, Crouch's study counts, General Electric eliminated over 5,000 of its 6,700 bargaining-unit jobs in Fort Wayne, shifting work to the Sunbelt states; Magnavox, Tokheim and Franklin Electric were relocating work the same way. Durable goods fell from 31 percent of area employment in 1970 to 24 percent by 1981. Defense work cushioned one corner — Magnavox expanded rapidly on Reagan-era spending in the early 1980s, building a new technical center and for a time becoming the region's largest employer as Harvester sank — but the trend was general, and national in cause on the record the newspapers kept: a Federal Reserve tightening against double-digit inflation, and the worst national downturn since the Depression.
Harvester, the end: The sequence is documented day by day in the News-Sentinel's history. The 172-day strike ended in April 1980 with the company's losses mounting; the Scout line closed in 1980 after an attempt to sell it failed; layoff followed layoff until, by September 1981, more members of UAW Local 57 were laid off than working. In July 1982 Harvester announced it would consolidate three truck plants into two, and Fort Wayne and Springfield, Ohio were set against each other — the United Auto Workers granted an estimated $200 million in concessions that May, and Indiana's governor and Fort Wayne's mayor carried a $31 million public offer to the company's Chicago headquarters — but on 27 September 1982 the company announced Fort Wayne would close. The last truck rolled off the line on 15 July 1983. The numbers at the end are given two ways: the New York Times counted 2,200 workers whose jobs were lost with the closing; the News-Sentinel puts the workforce, dwindled from 10,600 at the 1979 peak, at about 3,000 by the closing, with the engineering and parts operations remaining at about 2,000 employed into 1984 on ACGSI's account. Both counts stand, as counts of different things.
The city's bottom: Harvester was one loss among many in the same years. In all, the area lost on the order of 30,000 jobs; unemployment hung around 12 percent — 12.1 percent in the figure the city's histories carry — meaning more than 30,000 people out of work across northeast Indiana. Allen County built only 324 houses in 1981 and recorded 126 foreclosures. The census registered the human arithmetic: the city that had grown every decade of its existence shrank, from 178,269 in 1970 to 172,196 in 1980, its first decennial decline. Wayne Knitting Mills had already closed in 1960, its work transferred to Tennessee; the Pennsy Shops had closed in 1953; the Bass Foundry after the war. The factory system that had taken a century to build came down, in its Fort Wayne form, in about fifteen years.
Sources: Crouch (1986) (the GE job eliminations and Sunbelt shifts of 1969–1982, the durable-goods shares of 1970 and 1981, the relocations at Magnavox, Tokheim and Franklin Electric); News-Sentinel, "1980–1989: Decade of Economic Turmoil & Transition" (the strike's aftermath, the Scout closing, the September 1981 layoffs, the 1982 consolidation and announcement, the ~3,000 at closing, the 12 percent unemployment and 30,000 out of work, the 1981 housing and foreclosure figures, the Magnavox defense expansion); Knapp, "The Grim Reaper," The Progressive (the $200 million concessions of May 1982 and the $31 million public offer); the New York Times, 15 July 1983, as quoted in the Hoch Associates history (the 2,200 jobs lost at the closing); ACGSI (the engineering and parts remnant of about 2,000 in 1984); U.S. decennial census (the 1970–1980 decline).