"I've got knots in my stomach. We're losing our insurance, everything. My wife's in tears," Skelton said.
Skelton learned Tuesday that he will be among 120 workers laid off at the Bonner plant Oct. 3. The layoff will mark the end of commodity plywood production at a plant that once turned out more plywood than any other facility in the world.
It was about 2 p.m. Wednesday, time for the afternoon shift change at the plywood plant.
Workers like Skelton, singly and in pairs, pulled vehicles into spots in the lot and headed down to the plant.
Others, in twos and threes, exited the plant's yawning doors and mounted the stairs to the parking lot and headed home. Most everybody was wearing jeans and swinging lunchbox-size coolers.
Over the coming weeks, company officials and representatives of Local 3038 of the Lumber Production and Industrial Workers Union will negotiate a severance package. U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg announced Wednesday that he would be seeking $50,000 in federal funds to retrain the affected workers.
But all that seemed a long way off in the employee parking lot Wednesday.
Most of those leaving the plant were sympathetic but unaffected. The bulk of the layoffs hit the night and swing shifts because those tend to be filled with workers with less seniority.
"They got me," said Doug Knight, who has 10 years at the plant.
In a black tank top and blue jeans, Knight put a cheerful face on the upcoming ordeal. He knows the drill: About 11 years ago he was laid off from Tricon Lumber in Drummond. A year later, he was laid off from the Tricon lumber yard in Missoula. Since then, he has been making plywood in Bonner.
"Ten years. It went by pretty fast," Knight said.
"The thing that makes it tough is those bills keep piling up," he said. Health insurance is a major worry, too, he said.
Knight hopes, with all his years at the plant, that he might soon be rehired.
"I'm six on the recall list," he said.
As other employees retire or quit, Stimson will rehire laid-off workers in order of their seniority, said Stimson vice president Jeff Webber.
Another plywood worker rushed into work. He only had a moment, he said, because he was late.
"I've been here more than three years. We're hoping for retraining, for education, for something. I don't know what I'm going to do. I've got a wife and a house," he said.
Tom Hatch and Clarence Rye, who have been at the mill since 1971 and 1973, respectively, escaped the layoff.
"We survived another one," Rye said. The two had just finished a shift.
Hatch and Rye went through the list of the mill's owners over the last three decades. With the corporate mergers and what-not, it's a long list.
"They come and go, and we stick around like dumbasses," Rye said.
"It pays the bills," Hatch said.
Across Montana Highway 200 in the row of mill houses, John Skelton's wife, Chris, said she, too, is worried about health insurance and housing. The family rents a four-bedroom home from the mill for $450 a month. Almost all of the houses on the row along the highway are owned by Stimson.
"We couldn't afford a house like this in Missoula," Chris said. Company officials have told her that the family can stay in the home as long as the rent is paid.
With twin teenage sons, it feels like the family sometimes lives in hospital emergency rooms, she said.
Chris was at a doctor's office with one of her sons Tuesday when her husband phoned her from the mill to give her the bad news.
"He just said something about the layoff and the economy," she said.
On Wednesday, the Skelton yard was a portrait of family life. Tennis shoes were scattered near the front steps. A basketball poked out from under a bush. A sprinkler rained water onto a portion of the frontyard.
"The kids don't want to move. All their friends are here," Chris said.
The family had been talking about layoffs because the Bonner plywood plant had shut down for two weeks in July and will again close during the last week in August and the first week in September. Those aren't normal closures, but are due to local overproduction of the plant's premium panels, Webber said.
"But John didn't think it would happen. I didn't either. I figure, people are building things all the time," Chris said.
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