Jeff Allen has been interviewing for jobs for the first time since he graduated high school. He’s 56.
“I don’t think I was very good at it,” Allen said in an interview. “I never thought I’d be doing it again.”
He took down resume suggestions from his wife, Angie, with whom he shares five children and nine grandchildren. His work history section comes easily—there are the four decades of surviving mergers and acquisitions at the 200-year-old Chillicothe paper mill, and then, those nine months at Domino’s Pizza.
“If you’re going to get a new job making what we’re making at the paper mill, you’re probably going to drive to Columbus or you’re going to drive over to Jeffersonville, where the battery plant is going in, they still need more work over there,” he said. “There’s a steel mill just on the other side of the river down in West Virginia.”
Allen, a third generation mill worker and the United Steelworkers Local 731 President, found out close to Easter that Pixelle Specialty Solutions would cease all production at the plant on East 8th Street. More than 700 of his colleagues will be without work absent an eleventh-hour buyer.
“The morale is really down, it’s almost like watching a loved one die,” Allen said.
Staving off closure
Pixelle and its now-parent, the private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, took over at the paper mill in 2019. Before that, even as management came and went, residents often referred to it as the Mead paper mill.
Pixelle’s closure was imminent at first. Then, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno said he convinced H.I.G. to delay until Christmas.
That was Good Friday, when he and other elected officials brought together a large crowd of residents on the edge of Chillicothe. They celebrated, flooding the sunbaked parking lot of a credit union, the faded red-and-white smoke stacks puffing behind them.
Now, according to another government mandated WARN mass layoff notice, Pixelle maintains it will shutter Aug. 10. Moreno sees the move as a “total disgrace,” he said Thursday, but is confident the site will grab another owner.
“I’m proud of the fact that our involvement at least got 60 more days of payroll than it would have otherwise,” Moreno said in an interview.
The bliss from the Good Friday rally didn’t last long for Allen.
“(Pixelle) came in and basically said we fired our customers and we’re trying to get them back,” he said.
So for months, workers new and old have clocked in and out under a cloud of uncertainty. Some machines are already out of service. The majority of Allen’s colleagues, those who haven’t already fled, could get as little as one week of severance, he said.
What comes next
The rest of the community in Chillicothe is scrambling to figure out what comes next, too.
“If you had told me to guess at what that number was going to look like, I would have never said $1 billion for the state of Ohio, because I wouldn’t have thought that broadly,” said Mike Throne, chief executive officer of the Chillicothe Chamber of Commerce.
Throne is referring to an economic analysis done on the paper mill and the region in May, which concluded the plant contributes an additional 1,100 indirect jobs and 750 induced jobs statewide. Closing it could leave a $78.4 million hole in state tax revenue.
“It’s a declining market for what they did there and it’s not sustainable for the long haul,” he said.
So behind the scenes, federal and state offices, like Moreno’s, are holding weekly strategy meetings. The state’s powerful, private economic arm, JobsOhio, is courting potential buyers with lucrative incentive packages.
Throne is grateful for all the attention, but he said Chillicothe can take care of itself—he’s also relying on the retired HR executives in town holding mock interviews, the neighbors reading over resumes.
“I don’t need the government to hand me a pile of money right away,” Throne said, “but I need them to be available and ready.”
Allen doesn’t look to federal or state officials, either. He blames the private equity firm cutting what feels like those final paychecks.
“They couldn’t make it work. They couldn’t get the customers, they couldn’t get the orders, and I’m not sure how hard they worked at it,” he said.
As of July 9, several interested parties had put bids out with Pixelle. As they wait, Throne, with county and city leaders, is collecting signatures on a letter to H.I.G begging the firm for more collaboration in what they calls this “critical economic transition” for the region.
