Missoula happenings

Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. announced Monday morning that it's permanently shuttering the Frenchtown mill. For those of you unfamiliar with Missoula, the linerboard plant sits just west of town and employs hundreds of folks at the comfortable wage of $25.44 an hour. The plant has suffered a half-dozen temporary shutdowns over the past 15 years, but this latest development is troubling. As of Dec. 31, 417 people are out of a job.



Roy Houseman, acting president of the United Steelworkers Local 885, told me yesterday that—factoring for salaries alone—the closure will suck about $18 million annually from Missoula's economy. The trickle down has been covered extensively since news broke, and I jumped on the story myself as soon as we heard.

The 4 p.m. shift change at the mill Monday was, to put simply, depressing. Those coming out of the gate either declined to comment or said they'd basically spent the day in a daze. Connie Thompson, who met with a few of us press folk before the whistle blew, has worked at the plant for 27 years. "We tried to call everyone in our department during their day off to tell them, and most had already heard," she said. One example she offered up: a Smurfit-Stone employee got the news from a few bystanders at a gas station.

As for the moments following the announcement at work? "Everybody kinda sat looking at each other during a job meeting we had this morning," Howard Cotten told me across a concrete barrier. "Emotions ran high for a few second...then guys started talking about what to do next."

Some chose to put a bit of humor to the situation today.

I spent several hours in Frenchtown last night working on my story. Let's just say these guys are justified in their venting. Ten days till Christmas.