Charleroi, Pa. – For 132 Years, The Sound of the Factory Air Whistle Signaling the Start of the Workday at The Plant Along 8th and McKean Avenue In This Washington County Borough Meean All The Weg Weg Associate With Work: Men and Women Had Jobs, The Societal Had Food And Table Tablee Full and such Table and the Pork Talte Tablee and the Pors Talte Tablee and the Pors Tablee and Tablee and Talte Tablee and Talte Talte Tablee and Talpe Tablee and the Vibrant Pork Schools and the prosperous community.
It was a good sound.
It meant stability and aspiration.
No one here seemed to import it.
Last week, the sound of that whistle was different.
It was longer, 132 seconds to be exact, a number destined to mark how many years the Pyrex glass plant had been in this place.
It marked the end of the line for the plant.
The sound was sad while echoing through the Monkey Valley.
Era of prosperous workers
Three hundred women now do not have work in a 4,200 city.
Last September, the company, now known as Corelle Brands, announced that it would close the plant that had one of the great innovatives in its two firms of glass manufacturing of Pittsburgh, Thomas Evans & Company and the Infany Infany Infany Infany Infany Infany Infany Infany Infany.
A year later, the local newspaper boasted the expansion of manufacturing in western Pennsylvania.
Throughout a 16 -mile strip, the factories used more than 8,000 people who made good salaries at the beginning of the century in what was once sleepy cultivation lands.
Hundreds of houses of all kinds were built almost overnight in hills that gave the plants, employed real estate developers and construction workers and caused a boom in groceries, barberies, schools and wood churches.
By 1936, Macbeth-Evans was bought by Corning Glass Works, then the largest technical glassware manufacturer.
At the time of the merger, the plant used 1,800 people.
The news was so great that he made the main page of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the fold in November. 11, 1936.
Today all these factories have gone.
Pittsburgh Plate Glass, which was known as PPG, a place that used my father for 50 years, where he designed the furniture that manufactured glass, no longer manufactures glass.
They sold that division to Nippon Electric Glass in 2017, marking the end of the long history of PPG in glass production, which was in 1883.
Meanwhile, the anchor of the Charleroi Anchor Hocking plant on the Charleroi plant in March 2024 and announced that it would close it and transfer the operations to its plant in Lancaster, Ohio: it was also a company founded at the beginning of the century by Isaac Jacob in Lancaster.
Anchor Hocking has gone through a series of acquisitions, venture and bankruptcy capital owners.
Today, it is owned by Monomoy Capital Partners, a private capital firm located in the center of Manhattan.
We have talked a lot about tariffs and manufacturing since President Trump was re-elected in 2024 and China’s huge role in our industries, and the Corning Glass Works Macbeth-Vans division is certainly an example.
In fact, our unequal trade has played an important role in the collapse of glass manufacturing in this country.
The American industry hit a lot
Until the 1990s, the United States defended itself in glass manufacturing.
However, China’s aggressive export strategy, which flooded the US market with thousands of goods, affected the glass industry.
In June of last year, the alliance for American manufacturing launched an analysis that details the threat of Chinese imports it represented for US manufacturers.
In an informative session of the Institute of Economic Policy, the glass industry seemed very aware of the dangers of Chinese imports.
They pointed out that the United States’s glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2008.
At the same time, China’s participation in the US market increased from 3% to 31%.
As the US glass and glass plants closed. UU., Chinese manufacturers expanded.
China now leads glass production worldwide, exporting 28.7% of the world’s glass and glassware compared to 6.6% of the United States.
That is a pill difficult to swallow if you are from Charleroi, once known as “Ciudad de Glass”, where PPG had one of its main glass factories.
People here are a production not only or rationalization of production, but also or China’s domain in the market.
“Everything, from China, flooding our market is a large part of the problem. It is a disease,” said state senator Camer Bartolotta, who reacts the municipality.
The echo of the whistle persists. The workers of the workers in their last shift remain without control.
Everything has changed.
Those who believe that Americans do not do it because the work in manufacturing, who do not believe that there is pride in what they do, should sit a spell with the people who worked here.
