Danielle Byrne’s grandfather worked at the Corning glass plant in Charleroi for 50 years, she said, and at noon every day, like clockwork, the whistle at the plant would blow.
“My grandfather would reset his watch or the clocks in the house because there was no other time but Corning time,” she said.
Bryne was speaking at a rally just across the train tracks from the plant — now owned by Anchor Hocking, a subsidiary of Correll Brands. The company announced last week that it was closing the plant, which has been an anchor of the town for more than 100 years, and moving operations to a facility in Lancaster, Ohio. Anchor Hocking CEO Mark Eichorn told the plant’s 300 workers that about half of their jobs would be relocated to the new plant.
“If this takes place, it will devastate the town,” said Byrne, who works at the plant and serves as the leader for its United Steelworkers local.
She raised questions about whether the new plant would violate Federal Trade Commission competition rules, because she said the combined plant’s production would have a majority of the market.
And, she said, workers in Charleroi believe the new factory won’t be able to reproduce the quality of their work — known best for creating Pyrex glassware.
“It'll never be Pyrex, if it goes there,” she said. “Consumers will think they'll be buying premium Pyrex where it won't be the same. It won't be the same quality.”
Bryne and two local Republican leaders in Charleroi said they have been reaching out for help. They say Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick was the first one to offer to come to the town, which he did during Friday’s press conference. McCormick said the first step to addressing the issue was bringing more attention to it.
“I'm not promising I have any sort of magic solution, but I am promising that if people of good conscience can focus on this issue, we're hopefully going to get better decisions,” he said. “So I don't want to overpromise, but I do promise that I'm on this.”
McCormick first spoke about Charleroi last weekend, but not about the closing of the plant. At the time, he echoed comments made by former President Donald Trump that Charleroi was struggling to deal with an influx of Haitian migrants.
“Roads are dangerous, schools are overwhelmed and police are struggling to keep up with the surge,” McCormick said in a statement.
WESA looked into those claims and found that local Republicans and Democrats agree there has not been a surge in crime. The borough provided data showing that traffic accidents have fallen in five of the past six years. And Charleroi Area School District officials shared financial data that showed Pennsylvania is providing millions of dollars to help educate the roughly 15% of students who are learning English. Several teachers said the new immigrants are making progress, and many in the borough said the Haitians are welcome members of the long-struggling community.
On Friday, McCormick said that he believed the closing of the plant was a more important issue than the arrival of Haitian immigrants. But he declined to answer a WESA question about the statements he’d made about the Haitians.
And while the event was ostensibly focused on the plant, the press conference also had elements of a political rally for McCormick, with some attendees holding signs criticizing his opponent, Democrat Bob Casey, and sporting Republican shirts and hats. No Democratic leaders from Charleroi spoke at the rally.
Casey sent a letter to Eichorn on Thursday asking him to explain his decision to leave Charleroi in more detail, given that the glassware market is predicted to grow. “[It] is difficult to understand why it would be necessary to close the plant now,” he wrote. “I implore you to reconsider the decision to close this facility and, at the very least, to explore options to sell this facility to a willing buyer.”
Local Republican leaders criticized Casey for not reaching out until a few days ago. They say the letter that Casey sent out on Thursday was inadequate. It was not clear whether Casey had been invited to Friday’s rally.
The United Steelworkers released a statement after the event saying that Casey has been working on the issue behind the scenes. Pennsylvania director Bernie Hall said McCormick’s record as a CEO shows him to be the kind of person who would have cut the very jobs under discussion in Charleroi.
“He’s a hypocrite who lined his pockets on the backs of ordinary Americans — and he’s unfit to stand alongside hard-working USW members,” Hall said in his statement.
McCormick blamed the plant’s closing on the country’s underlying policies on China, regulation and energy production.
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