Young adults in Indiana decades ago could land a job with a good income, health care benefits and paid vacation without ever setting foot on a college campus.
But Ball State University students today face a work force where the value of a college degree is becoming more like that of a high school diploma, and where work benefits are declining as unions fall by the wayside.
Ball State's Center for Middletown Studies will conduct a study this spring that will include about 20 Muncie residents who were labor organization leaders in the 1950s through 1970s, before many factory jobs were outsourced or moved to the southern United States.
With 90 percent of students being from Indiana, many of their relatives, parents and grandparents are experiencing the effects of deindustrialization, said Warren VanderHill, emeritus provost and vice president for academic affairs. VanderHill is working with James Connolly, director of the Center for Middletown Studies, and Hurley Goodall, former Indiana state legislator, on the project.
"We want to make this community aware of the story," Connolly said. "It's an important part of the community that hasn't been told."
The oral histories will provide a look into the state of the work force decades ago, the disputes that arose as factories began to close and how retirees believe the economy will continue to change.
"These are people without a high school education or people with just a high school diploma, and they were able to enter the American work force," VanderHill said. "Because of these union contracts, they were able to live a good middle class life, but that world is slowly ending."
Workers at Muncie's BorgWarner plant were recently told their health coverage benefits would change, and retirees from other factories are not even sure about the status of their pension plans, Vander Hill said. Muncie Chevrolet, which has downsized from more than 3,000 jobs to fewer than 100 throughout the past few decades, is scheduled to close this spring, he said.
The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County gave $4,700 to the center for the study. VanderHill said the interviews should be completed by the end of the spring semester, and public presentations will be made in the fall. The center will also prepare a study guide on labor in Muncie for K-12 teachers, he said.
Through the study, Connolly hopes Ball State students will become more aware of the changing American economy and not take their college education for granted, he said.
"We always assume that the country has been prosperous and that prosperity has been widespread," Connolly said. "Working people fought to get a piece of the pie, and it's an important story for students to know."
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