Vise-Grip employees ponder what's next for them

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BY CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star

DeWITT — Just about everyone who lives here has worked at the Vise-Grip plant at some point or other, or so it seems to Jean Inderlied.

Inderlied, 88, worked in the tool plant’s packaging department for 9½ years in the 1970s and 1980s. Her children worked there, as did a son-in-law, assorted grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

For most of her life, she said, the Vise-Grip name has been nearly synonymous with DeWitt.

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Gary Oden talks on the phone in front of the Irwin Vise-Grip manufacturing plant in DeWitt on Wednesday. (AP)

“I don’t think there’s too many people that haven’t worked there,” she said Wednesday as she drank her morning coffee at R.J.’s Bar and Grill.

That will change.

During a Wednesday morning employee meeting, plant officials confirmed what the factory’s 330 employees and most of DeWitt’s 572 residents already knew — that the Irwin Industrial Tools plant where Vise-Grips are assembled will close.

Newell Rubbermaid, which owns Irwin Industrial Tools, will move at least some production to China. Production at the plant will continue until the end of October, though employees were given the rest of this week off, with pay.

After Wednesday’s meeting, many crossed the street from the plant to R.J.’s, where they wondered aloud what lies in store for themselves and for their community.

“I’m 56 years old. What am I going to do?” asked Susie Miller, who has worked at the plant for 34 years.

Her son, who was 4 when she began work at the factory, has worked there for 19 years.

Miller and her husband, a former Vise-Grip employee who accepted a buyout several years ago, own a home and several rental properties in DeWitt. Wednesday, she worried about property values in town, as well as about the other businesses, like R.J.’s, and about nearby Tri County Public Schools, and about the future of her community in general.

Nearly everyone else in town seemed to be wondering the same things.

“We are not sure what this really means, because we have never been without the plant for the past 80 years,” said Randy Badman, chairman of the DeWitt village board.

A few years ago, he said, the village updated water and sewer lines for the plant — projects for which the community is still paying.

Many local businesses — including the bank and the town’s two bars — have customer bases comprised largely of Vise-Grip employees.

“It means a lot of business going out the door,” said Ron Hinzman, owner of the Red Zone, where some Vise-Grip employees went for beers after Wednesday’s announcement.

Hinzman himself is a 26-year Vise-Grip employee. Like many plant employees, he saw the shutdown coming. So three years ago, he and his wife, Suzanne, bought the Red Zone for “something to fall back on a little bit,” he said.

Jud Douglas III, owner of DeWitt State Bank, said Wednesday afternoon that he, too, was concerned about what the end of Vise-Grip would mean for both his business and his customers.

“We’ll have to assess the situation and see what we can do to assist individuals,” he said.

And there’s also the issue of the plant itself.

The assessed value of the plant building is $5.62 million — about a quarter of the $22 million total assessed value of all private property in DeWitt, said Saline County Assessor Georgene Eggebraaten.

The Tri County School District encompasses an area with a total assessment of about $100 million, including the town of DeWitt, she said.

It’s too early to say how having an empty plant in town would affect property values elsewhere in DeWitt, Eggebraaten said.

She hopes it doesn’t impact valuations at all.

“We just hope another company will come in and use it,” Eggebraaten said.

Badman said that’s what he’s hoping for, too.

He himself used to work at the plant but was laid off several years ago, after 36 years with the company. Since then, rumors of layoffs or the plant leaving town altogether had surfaced periodically, he said.

At least now they’ll finally stop.

“The uncertainties that the employees and their families have had to face the past several years are somewhat cleared up now,” he said. “But now on the positive side there’s an opportunity to move on.”

Moving on in a way that’s good for DeWitt means working with local, regional and state economic groups and political leaders, Badman said.

He said DeWitt has a good workforce — many of the Vise-Grip employees laid off Wednesday had been with the company for decades — as well as a fire and rescue squad, paved streets, a swimming pool and good law enforcement. He hopes those things attract a new business to town.

“We have a very good, nice quiet town,” he said. 

Thursday, plant employees will attend one of two informational meetings about insurance, 401K and pension packages, education opportunities, unemployment and severance pay, among other topics.

After production at the DeWitt plant stops next month, employees will receive a severance package: one week’s pay for each year they’ve been with the company, for a maximum of 13 weeks.

Regardless of whether all those employees find new jobs, regardless of whether a new business moves in, the community still will have lost something, said Gary Oden, another Irwin employee.

The sign that welcomes visitors to DeWitt and the community’s Web site both proclaim the town the home of Vise-Grip. There’s a Vise-Grip display in the local museum, and everyone in town seems to have a Vise-Grip collection, he said.

“The Vise-Grip name carries a lot of weight,” he said. “To me, once it goes overseas, the name’s gone.”

Wednesday, he said, he still couldn’t quite believe the iconic tool wouldn’t be made in DeWitt any longer.

“Vise-Grip starts in a town of 500 in little Nebraska, and, to me, that has to mean something,” he said.

“I thought maybe that would keep it here.”

Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.