By JONATHAN PETERSON, Times Staff Writer
LA GRANGE, Ga.--When mournful black clouds drifted high above the blazing
carpet plant, workers feared it would be left to die, just one more name
on the honor roll of U.S. factories abandoned in an era of savage global
competition. But in this small Southern town, where entire families have
toiled in textiles since the Civil War, the 1995 episode had a surprisingly
happy ending. In a furious quest, factory managers hired an army of 3,000
hard hats who labored nonstop to rebuild the plant, toiling through the
night under the glare of stadium lights. Six months later, Live Oak was
back in business. None of the 600 jobs was shifted overseas. "I believe
in America," said Roger Milliken, owner of the Georgia plant and one of
the world's largest textile empires. "We put our money where our mouth
is." Meet one capitalist who is defiantly out of step with global capitalism,
a deeply conservative financier who has found common ground with pierced-and-tattooed
defenders of Tibet, a legendary textile magnate who once busted a union
but somehow emerged as a hero to many of his employees. Genteel yet steely
at 84, Milliken is sometimes seen--inaccurately--as asserting a puppeteer's
control over the movement that has risen up against globalization. He was
even accused of bankrolling protesters who rampaged through Seattle in
December at a World Trade Organization summit. Milliken denies this. Yet
he has emerged as a critical link in a chain that unites liberal champions
of rain forests and sea turtles with organized labor, consumer activists
and disgruntled nationalists on the political right. So bizarre is the
coalition that Milliken's Washington lobbyist compares it to the bar scene
in "Star Wars," a motley assortment of interplanetary creatures that stumble
into temporary haven under one roof. The odd alliance helped derail major
White House trade initiatives for much of the 1990s, including efforts
to broaden commerce with Africa and the Caribbean, and to expand the president's
powers to make trade deals free of revision from Congress. The coalition
now is nursing wounds, most notably the recent passage of normal economic
ties with China. But it is girding for future battles over free trade in
the Americas, a sweeping new global round of economic talks and other matters
that will occupy the next administration. "We're very serious. We're very
angry. We don't quit," declares Jock Nash, the former Marine who represents
Milliken in the capital. "That's what we're about." What Milliken and his
unlikely allies share is a profound belief that globalization--the increasingly
tight web of trade, corporate and regulatory policies binding together
the world economy--is leading to disaster. Milliken argues that international
accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the China deal
are blows to the nation, making U.S. factories vulnerable to cheap foreign
competition and, in the process, harming American livelihoods, households
and entire communities. Unlike others in the "Star Wars" melange, he speaks
as a successful global industrialist himself, an employer of 16,000 with
65 factories, mostly in the southeastern United States, but with more than
a dozen plants overseas. According to Forbes magazine's "Private 500" list,
Milliken's company enjoyed sales of $3.1 billion in 1999, making it the
nation's 35th-largest private firm. But because his sprawling company remains
a family affair, Milliken also differs from industrialists who are beholden
to Wall Street demands for short-term profits. While many large manufacturers
cut back their American work forces in favor of cheap labor overseas, Milliken
argues that a company has obligations "not only to its shareholders, but
to its employees who have given their lives to the business, to suppliers
and to customers who have made it possible for you to survive." But does
his hostility to virtually all market-opening trade deals with the emerging
world offer a useful guide for America in an increasingly interdependent
global economy? Mainstream policymakers and economists argue that it does
not; although there are trade-offs to trade, they are outweighed by the
benefits for rich countries and poor, for exporting nations and those that
purchase their wares. And many argue that resistance to globalization is
futile. "You're going to have globalization whether you like it or not--it's
a fact of life," maintains Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., head of the Economic
Strategy Institute, a think tank that Milliken stopped supporting financially
after Prestowitz endorsed the WTO. "The issue is what kind of globalization
are you going to have. . . . Frankly, I think the discussion has moved
beyond where Roger is." Even in his own industry, which has endured a hemorrhage
of garment-making jobs to cheaper regions abroad, views on globalization
are often at odds with Milliken's. For example, some U.S. textile makers
support broader trade ties with the Caribbean and Mexico so that they,
rather than Asian firms, can sell to garment factories there. Skeptics
believe that Milliken's America-first fervor reflects an element of self-interest,
an attempt to protect his own company. Whether it is that, paternalistic
concern for American workers or patriotism that shapes Milliken's views,
he expresses them passionately. In a rare interview at his Spartanburg,
S.C., headquarters, Milliken occasionally raised his voice, such as when
he complained: "We're just a bunch of suckers in the way we trade." In
person, Milliken is energetic and refined, a product of Groton prep school
and Yale, where he absorbed the history of empires that lost their economic
influence and, ultimately, their military power. As his 85th birthday approaches,
he is constantly on the move, flying in one of the company's three jets
to meet with buyers and executives in this country and abroad. Too often,
he said, U.S. officials are duped by nations that fail to provide American
businesses the same legal rights that this country offers foreigners. "The
creation of wealth is manufacturing, mining, fishing and farming," he said,
citing an axiom that may seem quaint in a "new economy" that doesn't attach
much value to those old-line industries. "God help the nation that ignores
that fact." These are hardly the concerns that motivate street protesters
who have seized on the global economy and some of its key institutions
as unfairly rigged against poor people, traditional cultures and the environment.
What Milliken shares with the protesters is a desire to rethink basic assumptions,
such as the one that says trade is automatically a good thing. They also
agree that the WTO, which rules on trade disputes among nations, is a dangerous
incursion on U.S. sovereignty. The movement howled into public view at
the WTO summit in Seattle in December, when street protests engulfed the
convention center in chaos. "I thought it was fabulous," Milliken said.
"You know why? Because only 3% of the population in the United States knew
what the hell the WTO was. Today, a much larger percentage does. . . .
This was an uprising of people wanting to be heard. . . . " But Milliken
denied financing a large protest contingent linked to consumer advocate
(and presidential candidate) Ralph Nader, a financial tie that has been
speculated in print. "I haven't" supported Nader, said Milliken, a longtime
Republican activist who in this election is supporting Reform Party candidate
Pat Buchanan. Milliken does not wish for total retreat from the global
economy. But he argues that when a rich country such as the United States
imports products from have-not nations with much lower wages or regulatory
standards, competition goes awry with grave social fallout. "We've got
12 plants in Europe that sell to Europe," he said. "We've got one plant
in Japan that sells to Japan. If we get a product that's so good somebody
in an emerging nation wants to buy it, fine. But we'd never put a plant
in a country that pays starvation wages . . . at the expense of United
States employment." It's "no problem to try to compete with somebody that
has to live by the same rules and costs and taxes and government regulations
as we do," he added. "That's competition. The other is subsidy at the expense
of the environment, at the expense of [Americans] who are in poverty."
While his admirers are moved by such sentiments, make no mistake: Milliken
& Co. has long been known for its unsentimental demand for efficiency.
Even today, Milliken remains notorious in some circles for his decision
44 years ago to shut down a mill that was unionizing in Darlington, S.C.
The closure, he said recently, was triggered by the union's resistance
to the sorts of modernization needed to compete. Can the same owner be
labor's friend and its enemy? "Here's a guy who shut a plant and is about
as hard-core right wing as it gets--but at the end of the day, he's a business
leader who's arm and arm with labor," said Ivan A. Schlager, a trade attorney
and former chief counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee. "To me, it's
the ultimate irony. "People charge that Roger is just a rank protectionist.
In terms of execution and business vision, he's just unparalleled." Visits
to Milliken factories leave an impression of modern technology creating
a dizzying array of fabrics and chemicals. Milliken products are used in
crayons, casket liners, baseball uniforms, spandex, military camouflage,
auto upholstery, dashboards, air bags, carpet tiles, space shuttle flight
suits, computer ribbons, Holiday Inn signs, tennis balls, pool tables,
flags, table linens, parachutes, shower curtains, playpen webbing and graduation
gowns. Private industry's most prestigious quality awards are displayed
at headquarters, where the company's safety obsession--and the boss' paternalistic
imprint--cannot be missed: "Please hold handrails while using stairs,"
requests a sign in the lobby. Monitors in orange vests regularly pop up
on the service road to check whether employees are using their seat belts.
Inside the Live Oak carpet factory and design center, employees scramble
to keep up with a surge of orders from as far away as China and the Middle
East. Longtime employees such as Nita Adcock, 50, who tearfully recalls
the
1995 fire and dramatic rebuilding effort, hope factory jobs will survive
in the region: "I think that's what Mr. Milliken and other leaders are
fighting for." Yet Live Oak has been transformed in a way that illuminates
the knife's edge between safeguarding workers and safeguarding profits
in the global economy. Employment rolls have plunged from about 700 before
the fire to 435 today, a decline achieved through attrition rather than
layoffs, managers say. Many of the jobs eliminated were of the old-economy
"muscle" variety--pushing, pulling, stacking and lifting. The plant, meanwhile,
is producing more carpet, with more varied designs, than ever before. While
workers were scrambling to rebuild Live Oak, Milliken was forging informal
ties with organized labor, Nader and others, a coalition that helped bring
Clinton administration trade initiatives to a halt for several years. "We
share intelligence. We share access to people on the Hill," said Ann Hoffman,
legislative director of UNITE, the union of needle trades, industrial and
textile employees that once opposed Milliken in the South Carolina labor
war. " . . . It is a useful collaboration." These days are not so heady
for the movement. Congress this year approved market-opening deals with
China, Africa and the Caribbean, exposing U.S. firms and workers to intense
new competition in the making of low-cost products. Presidential candidates
Al Gore and George W. Bush are sympathetic to the global economy. Yet public
opinion polls show that Americans' attitudes are mixed. And when prosperity
inevitably fades, opposition to globalization will inevitably grow. "The
chickens will come home to roost," predicts Terence P. Jeffrey, editor
of the conservative journal Human Events. "There will be a time when the
political establishment pays a price for selling out the sovereignty of
the United States--and communities of the United States--in the name of
profit. And when that time comes around, people will have Roger Milliken
to thank for keeping the flame burning."
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
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