JACKSON - Any time a Mississippi community loses 100 jobs, that's bad news. When those jobs are lost in the heart of the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the post-Katrina era, that's even worse news.
Oreck Corp. announced this week that it would close a company call center in Long Beach in 60 days, eliminating 100 jobs.
The company blamed the decision on damage from Katrina and said it was necessary to protect the company from having the call center too close to another hurricane.
That's that, it seems. Capitalism demands harsh decisions at times, and the Orecks are confirmed capitalists. But there's another side to the story that deserves to be told.
When Hurricane Katrina slammed into Mississippi's Gulf Coast on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, manufacturing jobs were just another casualty of the storm.
Many of those jobs were simply gone with the wind.
But on Sept. 9, just 11 days after the killer storm devastated the Coast, one Mississippi manufacturer that makes a living moving wind found a way to reopen its facility and put its 500 employees in Long Beach back to work.
Oreck, the New Orleans-based vacuum cleaner company founded in 1963, became the state's first Katrina-damaged manufacturing plant to get the production lines going again. Oreck has 1,500 U.S. employees making and selling cleaning products in 475 retail outlets and on the Internet.
The company's signature vacuum cleaners are produced in its 375,000-square-foot production center in Long Beach.
At the time, employee Joyce Harris, who had worked for two years in the company's molding department, said she was grateful. "So many people here don't have jobs," Harris said. "Being able to work gives you something to think about other than the damage and a paycheck. That's important."
In addition to resuming production in Long Beach, the company launched a substantial on-site housing and food program for displaced workers and a crisis-needs program to help employees get back on their feet.
"Our people have a place to put their heads, food and water and a paycheck coming in from a business that's committed to staying in this community," company CEO Tom Oreck said on Sept. 9 during a reopening cookout for employees and their families.
Gov. Haley Barbour attended the company's post-Katrina reopening event held in the Oreck plant's parking lot amid scores of temporary housing units for employees brought in at company expense.
The event was also attended by the company's founder and well-known TV pitchman, David Oreck, and a number of Oreck family members.
"So many people on the Gulf Coast have lost everything or almost everything, and Oreck is giving its employees and the community of Long Beach what they need most - a job," Barbour said that day. The governor was genuinely moved by the Oreck family's step-up-to-the-plate style and compassion for their employees.
"The reopening of this facility by the Oreck family more than sets the standard for the spirit of renewal and rebuilding that's growing every day on the Coast," Barbour said last year.
After the storm, Oreck distributed 188 employee assistance grants, totaling $887,900 from its employee assistance fund.
The bottom line is that Oreck made a decision it deemed necessary for its business that eliminated 100 jobs in Long Beach.
But when other companies simply didn't reopen on the Coast at all after Katrina, Oreck did - and treated its employees with compassion and decency.
I was at the Oreck plant on Sept. 9, 2005, when it reopened. It was a moment of hope in a place that needed hope and help.
Capitalists? Yes. But the Orecks have been good corporate citizens in Mississippi in Katrina's wake.
