Darin Gilley, 45, worked for Integram St. Louis Seating in Pacific, Missouri for more than 17 years before he was laid off last October. President of UAW Local 1760, he’d worked almost every job at Integram and had risen to a production operator.
Integram made seating for the Dodge Chrysler minivans, a historically profitable, stable company that won numerous awards using an Integram’s exclusive system that molded foam and fabric to make comfortable, state of the art seating.
“There were actually 509 different types of seats that you could choose from in a Chrysler minivan,” says Gilley. “This was the most complex seating program in the nation.”
It came as a surprise to Integram workers, therefore, when the plant had to cut the first set of shifts. Called the “Valentine’s Day Massacre” by some of the employees, the 2007 cuts caught people by surprise, says Gilley, because they had been working a lot of overtime. In 2008, the plant finally closed.
“Chrysler is a huge employer and with Integram employing about 800 people, the plant was the largest employer in [Pacific] in general,” says Gilley. “The next largest was the school district.”
Many workers at Integram had worked there as long as Gilley, and the crews had become tight friends and were each other’s social circles.
“It was difficult to see them walk out [on the last day],” says Gilley. “I had tried to make sure that they received all the benefits that they were able to get, but some people have not looked for work for 18, 19 years.”
“In a regular economy, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Gilley continues. “But Ford closed in 2006 and there are many others. So there are not a lot of suppliers and a lot of unemployed people.”
