Jonathan Snyder spent Good Friday rolling eggs in dye-filled shaving cream with his fiancĂ©e and her daughter in their Cumberland, Md. home. Last year, this would have seemed unusual for Snyder. As a production specialist at the nearby Hunter Douglas window blinds plant, he worked Monday through Friday and sometimes even overtime on Saturdays. But about six months ago, that started to change.Ěý

“People aren’t buying enough to keep the plants running,” Snyder said. “We were working two days a week, three days a week. We weren’t getting full paychecks.”ĚýĚý

He began to notice other signs of trouble too. The company tore down equipment to send to their facility in Monterrey, Mexico. A group from Monterrey traveled to the Cumberland plant to learn how to make certain products. Then in March, Hunter Douglas’s director of operations flew in from Salt Lake City for what workers were told was an inspection.ĚýĚý

“And then towards the end of the shift, they brought all the people from all the departments together, and then they announced that they were going to be closing this plant,” Snyder said.

Hunter Douglas declined to be interviewed for this story but provided a press release that said they “decided to close its fabrication facility in Cumberland, MD and consolidate with other out-of-state company-owned facilities.” The release also mentions they’ll retain about 120 customer support and credit analyst employees, who will work remotely. The other around 240 workers, like Snyder, will need to find new jobs when the plant shutters this summer.Ěý

“It’s not a big deal to make a window shade or anything like that,” Snyder said. “But I actually have a finished product that I can look at and take pride in the work that I’m doing. So, I love doing what I’m doing.”Ěý

When the company first opened a factory in Allegany County in 1990, it joined a long history of manufacturing. Cumberland is located on several historic thoroughfares, from Native American paths to the B&O and C&O railroads to the first federally funded road.Ěý According to historian Albert Feldstein, this made the city an opportune spot for manufacturing goods that could travel from the East to the frontier in the West. Ěý

The city became full of tin mills, glass, factories, and breweries. In 1888, a large paper mill opened in nearby Luke, Md. Later, Kelly Springfield Tire Corporation opened in Cumberland in 1916, followed by the Celanese Corporation in 1924. Feldstein said more than 13,000 people once worked in that plant. According to census data, Cumberland’s population peaked in 1940 at just shy of 40,000 residents.Ěý

Today’s economic landscape looks much different. All of those big factories have closed and data from the state’s Department of Labor show a 47% drop in manufacturing employees in the county between 2002 and 2021. The city’s population has also decreased by more than 50% from its peak. Ěý

“I’d say in terms of what’s happened over the past maybe 50 years in manufacturing—and it’s not just a Cumberland story, it’s a national story—we’ve lost much, the majority of our manufacturing and industrial base,” Feldstein said.Ěý

Allegany County’s Board of County Commissioners is working to help lessen the blow of the Hunter Douglas plant closure. Dave Caporale, board president, said they’d had a strong working relationship with the company, and he was “really disappointed” to see them go. Caporale even called the governor’s office when he heard the news, but they could do nothing to help.Ěý

“A lot of those jobs are moving to Mexico,” Caporale said. “So, I mean, there really wasn’t a leg for us to stand on as far as trying to keep them here.”Ěý

Caporale said the board is working to find a new business to move into the Hunter Douglas site and they’ve partnered with the state’s Department of Labor to set up a job fair for employees in May.

“There’ll be more jobs at that particular offering than there are positions at Hunter Douglas that will be being lost, so that’s good,” Caporale said. “For some folks, maybe it might be a different fit, but there are enough jobs available to absorb all of the employees.”Ěý

Another resource for the laid-off workers is Western Maryland Works, a workforce development facility and makerspace that’s part of Allegany College of Maryland. One of their focuses is retraining laid off employees in skills like welding, carpentry and machining, like they did when the Verso Paper Mill closed in 2019, and almost 700 people lost their jobs.ĚýĚý

Dave Smarik, the makerspace manager at Western Maryland Works, said they’re ready to help the Hunter Douglas employees with the same kinds of intensive training programs that can help the workers find new jobs.Ěý

“There’s some folks that would say in our area here that manufacturing production is dying off,” Smarik said. “In our area, yes, jobs have been lost. Employment has been lost. But new employment, new employment opportunities have been created through the use of technology, the use of innovation.”Ěý

There are still companies in the area, like Northrop Grumman and National Jet, that are looking to hire workers with these skills.Ěý

“We have a lot of demand for high-skilled machinists, tool, die and gauge makers, engineers that really knowĚýmanufacturing, technology skills and such,” Smarik said.Ěý

As for Jonathan Snyder, the Hunter Douglas production specialist, he’s planning to attend the job fair and wait and see what opportunities come his way after the plant closes mid-summer. He’d like to stay around Cumberland, where he and his family have made their home.Ěý

“I don’t have any plans to go anywhere,” Snyder said. “I’ve seen a lot of job offers in other areas and I haven’t really looked at it.”Ěý

For Snyder and the other employees that are losing their jobs, choosing to stay or go is just one of the many choices they’ll need to make as they head into an uncertain future.Ěý

The post Cumberland residents wonder what’s next for manufacturing as another plant closes first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

“The weather is extremely unusual,” Chen said. “But it was a tremendous benefit because I had a friend visiting who, peak blooms were on her bucket list, so it worked out perfectly.”

ĚýTrying to predict the cherry blossom bloom is a popular guessing game around Washington, D.C. 91ÇŃ×Óington Post, NBC Washington and the National Park Service all take a stab at guessing the correct date. It’s no easy task and, according to Matthew Morrison, arborist and urban forester at the Park Service, forecasting peak bloom has become even more challenging in recent years. Ěý

Morrison oversees 20,000 trees at the National Mall and Memorial Parks, including 3,700 cherry trees. He’s also part of the group attempting to predict peak bloom yearly. His team had been using Growing Degree Days, a measure of heat accumulation. But recently, that model started coming up short.Ěý

“That was fairly effective. Maybe they’d be 60% effective or something along that line,” Morrison said.Ěý“But now, it seems to be with the environmental changes, that model seems to be kind of failing us.”Ěý

Morrison has incorporated other data, like solar radiation, to help improve the Park Service’s predictions. But he’s noticed other changes in the trees’ blooms due to climate change, including areas of the trees’ flowers developing at different rates.Ěý

“Today, I was out looking at the cherry trees and one tree might have portions that are in full flat wood, other portions where the flowers are still developing. And that’s on one tree, and that’s very, very unusual,” Morrison said. Ěý

The flowers aren’t the only part of the trees that have been impacted by climate change, according to Morrison. Rising tidal waters have introduced pollution and heavy metals into theĚýsoil where the cherry trees grow. Hotter temperatures have made the trees more likely to get sunscald on their bark, which Morrison likens to sunburn. Ěý

It takes a year-round effort to combat these changes and keep the trees healthy. The Park Service puts down woodchips to help replenish the soil and has started pruning fewer branches to keep the trees’ canopies intact to better protect their bark from the sun. They also monitor the trees for diseases, which can decimate stands where every tree is the same species, like the cherry trees at the Tidal Basin.Ěý

“So that leaves us in an area that requires a terrific amount of maintenance and monitoring and worrying,” Morrison said. “So the urban forester has sleepless nights worrying about the stand of either 3,700 cherry trees or the remaining of the 20,000 trees in general.”Ěý

Despite all of these challenges, the cherry trees’ pink blooms remain beautiful, even on the rainy day when Beth Chen and her friend Maureen Sharon set out for a stroll around the Tidal Basin. Ěý

“I think they’re beautiful,” Sharon said. “I wish it was sunny just for pictures, but it’s kind of nice to not have the crowd.”Ěý

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