For over 100 years, the Master Lock plant in Milwaukee manufactured locks and security products. Now, what was for years the last remaining large manufacturing holdout on the north side of Milwaukee’s industrial sector, is being shut down after the company informed employees a phased shutdown will begin on 31 October 2023, with final operations halting by March 2024.
The plant employed more than 1,100 employees in the 1990s but the number of employees in the plant fell to about 270 in 2003 as Master Lock began offshoring jobs to Mexico and China.
That policy was reversed a few years later and then president Barack Obama visited the plant in February 2012, praising the company for reshoring jobs from China back to the US. Employment at the plant rebounded to more than 370 jobs by the end of 2010 and ticked up to 412 jobs in 2012.
Now employees noted the work will be sent abroad to Mexico and China again, where Master Lock has manufacturing plants. A subsidiary of Fortune Brands Innovations, Master Lock reported a record revenue of $860m in 2022 and its parent company has noted in investor materials plans to boost profits from $50m to $75m through “footprint improvements” that include the closure of the plant.
More than 400 jobs will be lost, including 330 workers represented by United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 469.
Mike Bink, previously served as president of UAW Local 469, has worked at the Master Lock plant in Milwaukee since 1979. “We’ve been stumbling along, slowly getting better, but it’s been a struggle, and that gets us to this mess,” said Bink. “The plant is going through all the stages of grief. Although I think anger will hang around for an unusually long period of time.”
Workers at the plant have been unionized since the 1930s, he said. He worked at the plant when workers there went on strike in 1980 and explained after that strike Master Lock brought in new management. The union and company had a good working relationship until the 1990s when outsourcing from the plant began, said Bink.
In May, Bink said the union’s executive board was called into a meeting with Master Lock right before a meeting with first-shift workers at the plant, and told that the plant was closing with a very brief explanation.
He said the union is still pushing for more information before beginning bargaining on the effects of the closure. The union’s request to meet with Fortune Brands Innovation executives was denied, said Bink.
“This must have been in the works for several years at a minimum because you cannot pick up the operation we have, where we make literally millions of parts a day, and just plop it somewhere else without a lot of work,” said Bink. “We’re in the poorest area of Milwaukee, the vast majority of our people running that equipment are from Milwaukee. There aren’t a lot of jobs that they can go to that will come close to replacing that income and benefit level and we’re dealing with a corporation where that is just not a consideration.”
The Milwaukee area is heavily reliant on manufacturing, with the second highest concentration of manufacturing jobs in the US, employing 14% of the area’s workforce. Bink explained the neighborhood where the Master Lock plant resides on the north side of Milwaukee used to be the site of over 50 major manufacturing firms, but over the past decades, those plants shut down.
“All that is gone, we were the only holdout,” said Bink.
The union, workers and local elected officials have criticized the plant closure announcement and have held rallies pushing for the company to reverse their decision.
“We didn’t see it coming now. But when they got rid of our skilled trades, in a very failed attempt to save money, it kind of crept into the back of your mind that didn’t go away. But again, we didn’t know that it was imminent,” said Bink. “We’re not fools, we see the work going away. But you know, it’s like being hit by a bus, you don’t know what day that’s going to happen.”
Publicists for Master Lock did not respond to requests for comment about the closure or offshoring.
A statement released when the plant closure was announced said: “This decision is not a reflection of the skills, performance or commitment of the Milwaukee workforce, and it was not made lightly. Rather, this is an opportunity to continue to enhance our supply chain resilience, maximize potential growth of the business and maintain our competitiveness into the future.”
