Irrevocably Global: On Chad Broughton’s “Boom, Bust, Exodus”

Chad Broughton | Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Maquilas, the Rust Belt, and a Tale of Two Cities | Oxford University Press | 2015 | 408 Pages

A few years ago, my husband and I rented an apartment in LaPorte, Indiana, where the Region (a local expression for the northwestern corner of the state) meets the Rust Belt. His first job was as a project engineer at a steel mill that had been built in 1989 as a joint venture between two companies—one American, one Japanese. My grandpa, a fellow Lake-Effect snow lover and a 40-year veteran of a Fort Wayne tire plant which now employed his sons and grandsons, referred to LaPorte as “God’s Country.” And on a late fall evening, on the way home from a job that paid the bills and the student loans, when the smell of fresh baked bread from the nearby factory drifted over Highway 2 and the sun was setting, it often felt that way. 

Although we soon moved away, I often ponder the unique juxtaposition of spaces that make up the Region and the Rust Belt. LaPorte is not so close to Chicago as to be totally enmeshed in the Northwest Indiana urban grit, yet is not quite all the way to the rural corn fields that spread between cities like Detroit and Toledo. Thus, LaPorte, French for “The Door,” is a geopolitical focal point pinpointing the overlap of social and economic change. Similar factors have been at play in Galesburg, Illinois and the McAllen-Reynosa area along the US-Mexico border, the twin foci of Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Maquilas, the Rust Belt, and a Tale of Two Cities. Chad Broughton, the author, is a sociologist at the University of Chicago, and has published several articles on labor in the post-industrial Midwest and in Mexico. In the book, Broughton uses Galesburg and McAllen-Reynosa to explore larger, multi-national narratives including the impacts of NAFTA policies on Midwestern life and Hispanic culture alike, focusing on labor union negotiations and the interchanges between competitive wage rates, profit margins, and outsourcing. 

Broughton’s central argument is that globalization is a complicated systemic process with countless trade-offs. New factories constructed in previously rural areas are cleaner and more efficient than their Industrial Age counterparts and connect laborers with consistent jobs. Switching out of factory life has enabled some workers to pursue new, more personally fulfilling avenues of employment. Yet these transitions to the global labor marketplace have also caused significant social upheaval in communities across Galesburg, Reynosa-McAllen, and further south in Veracruz, Mexico. Broughton describes these shifts through interpersonal narratives that span at least a decade, in some cases a few generations. He does not center either city or region, causing the other to appear distant and irrelevant, but shows how local economies fit into the global economy by giving equal attention to workers in places a thousand miles apart. Critically, Broughton’s project is a work of sociology. Despite including descriptions of economic policy, the book does not focus on granular numerical models or provide extensive details on the corporate margins of the pan-American small kitchen appliances marketplace. It discusses corporate strategy on a higher level, and expresses these economic macro-narratives through the stories of individual workers.

Boom, Bust, Exodus opens with Mike Patrick, who started working at the Admiral refrigerator plant in Galesburg in 1959, stayed there several decades, and became a Union negotiator through the plant’s ownership transition from Admiral to Maytag. The book also narrates stories of Annette and Doug Dennison, who both worked at that same plant until it was shut down in 2004, and how they each used Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and other funding methods to begin new jobs as a radiologist and a K-12 school program administrator. Broughton relates the trajectories of Laura Flora Oliveros, who moved north from Veracruz, Mexico and worked at a new Maytag plant in McAllen-Reynosa, and Teresa Chávez and Marina Ferror, who started a grassroots union movement to educate workers about their rights under Mexican labor law. 

These narratives show readers individual parts of a larger system that includes Galesburg and McAllen-Reynosa and extends through Iowa (the state in which the Maytag Corporation was founded) and the ejido farms of rural Veracruz, comprising a broader history of manufacturing on the North American continent. By focusing on individual workers and their interactions with union activism and capital, Broughton traces labor history from the early 1900s through the “golden age” of US manufacturing in the 20th century to the outsourcing and structural unemployment of the early 2000s. As much as readers may want to see a linear progressive or regressive narrative of labor or capitalism, Broughton refrains from wholesale generalization. While he contrasts the welfare capitalism of Maytag’s founders, expressed by their construction of community facilities and emphasis on fair wages, with the bean-counting, golden-parachuting career of the company’s CEO in the year the Galesburg factory was closed and labor outsourced to Mexico, he does not definitively state that all companies in the early 1900s cared about their workers or that all companies in the early 2000s were only concerned about cutting costs. Rather, Broughton uses this contrast to show the progression of capitalism and globalization through the 20th century. For the most part, he leaves readers to make their own judgments about what is “good” or “bad” for business and employees.

Broughton is also careful not to misrepresent the past as a time of easy jobs. He describes in detail the painful fiberglass scratches Mike Patrick suffered from the refrigerator line and notes how many Maytag workers found factory work physically taxing and mentally arduous. Despite this, they “made their peace” with steady, well-paying employment. Broughton’s descriptions of a “blue-collar camaraderie” shaped by strong work friendships, some sexism, and after-work meetings at the bar round out his picture of the Midwestern factory life that was lost when the Maytag plant closed and those jobs moved to a newly constructed plant on the US-Mexico border. Broughton shows the political tensions these moves caused in the Midwest; members of the local manufacturing union spoke about the importance of American manufacturing at a campaign rally alongside future president Barack Obama. NAFTA trade policies are largely to blame for changes in their daily lives. 

Similarly, Broughton details the erosion of traditional agricultural lifestyles in Mexico as young workers migrated north in search of higher paying jobs and then became part of a consumer-focused culture defined by the border economy. Individuals who chose to journey north, such as Laura Flores Oliveros, spent their life savings, often broke up their families, and worked long hours for wages that barely paid for food and a home. Yet because the Reynosa area is closer to the opportunities of the United States, many Veracruz residents chose to migrate. In these ways, Broughton illustrates the tensions faced by past, present, and future generations: the choice between a physically challenging job and compensation that enables necessary recovery and healthcare, and between required education and available jobs.

Broughton explores the relationship of individuals to their work—particularly the erosion of direct connections between brands, employees, product quality, and consumers. He relays a Galesburg factory worker’s lament that since the manufacture of certain components was outsourced, they were less likely to arrive at the Galesburg factory for final assembly sized with precision. Likewise, a maquiladora worker recalls that when she first started her job she cared about quality, but the required pace was so fast it soon became impossible to maintain. 

Thus, Boom, Bust Exodus is a story of change, not only in global economic systems but in the lives of everyday working class people. It shows how products are literally not made like they used to be because the 21st century manufacturing process is global. And while that has benefitted today’s consumer marketplace, it does not negate the necessity of remembering that the cost of a high standard of living is sometimes the health and safety of workers here at home or in a seemingly distant country. Broughton reminds us that we are workers competing in a global labor marketplace and are forced to reckon with the consequences of decisions made by CEOs and policy makers. Corporate bottom lines and national trade policies will continue to impact individuals and Broughton shows the power that can be found in speaking and organizing together. 

As the children of the workers in Boom, Bust, Exodus grow up, they find themselves in a world where even knowledge work, such as computer modeling or programming, can be outsourced to multinational labor markets, reducing the protections that a college degree or certain technical skills may have afforded in the past. As a fellow Midwesterner, I was able to see the threads of the lives of people I personally know in Broughton’s stories. I better understand how their work was influenced by ideas and decisions bigger than themselves, how their political opinions about labor may have been shaped and formed, and how their lives in the Rust Belt are chained to geopolitical and socioeconomic changes in Texas, Reynosa, Veracruz, and other parts of the world. 

Broughton’s narratives remind readers that transitions from local to global economies are often a mixed bag; national economic policies can yield unintended consequences, both positive and negative, in the lives of individual workers. Boom, Bust, Exodus ends on a mostly positive note, reminding us that progress is not found in regret or in accusations, but rather in making the best of the situation in which we find ourselves. Working together is the only way to create and influence political systems, which are now irrevocably global.