Worker Ownership as an Alternative to Industrial Recruitment

In April of this year, a few hours before midnight , nine people loaded into a single pickup truck for an all-night journey from Murfreesboro, North Carolina to New York City. The days spent to, from, and in New York were quite an experience, involving meetings with union officials, national church groups, national foundations, and zipper manufacturing and equipment experts. The trip was one of the early steps in a struggle by a group of life-long residents of northeastern North Carolina to take local economic development into their own hands. These efforts began with the sudden closing of the Talon Zipper plant in Woodland, North Carolina, which at its peak had employed more than 450 people in a region where industrial jobs are few and far apart