User:SpaceFerret/sandbox

[Put under "Second half of the 21st Century" as it's own subheading under the Camden Wiki page]

Industrial Decline

After WWII, Camden’s biggest manufacturing companies, Campbell’s Soup and the RCA Victor, decentralized their production operations. This period of Capital Flight was a means to regain control from unionized workers and to avoid the rising labor costs unions demanded from the company. Campbells kept their corporate headquarters in Camden, but their cannery productions were located elsewhere after a union worker's strike in 1934. Local South Jersey tomatoes were replaced in 1979 by Californian industrially produced tomato paste.

In 1940, RCA Victor relocated production to rural Indiana to employ low-wage ethnic Scottish-Irish workers and since 1968, has employed Mexican workers from Chiuahua.

The NY Shipbuilding company, founded in 1899, shut down in 1967 due to mismanagement, unrest amongst labor workers, construction accidents, and a low demand for shipbuilding. When NY ship shutdown, Camden lost it’s largest postwar employer.

The opening of the Cherry Hill Mall in 1961 increased Cherry Hill’s property value which contributed to decreasing Camden’s. Enclosed suburban malls, especially ones like Cherry Hill’s, which boasted well-lit parking lots and babysitting services, were preferred by white middle-class over Philadelphia’s central business district. Cherry Hill became the designated regional retail destination. The mall, as well as the Garden State Racetrack, the Cherry Hill Inn, and the Hawaiian Cottage Cafe attracted the white middle class of Camden to the suburbs initially.

Manufacturing companies were not the only businesses that were hit. After they left Camden and outsourced their production, white-collar companies and workers followed suit, leaving for the newly constructed offices of Cherry Hill.

Unionization

Approximately ten million cans were produced at Campbell’s per day. This put additional stress on cannery workers who already faced dangerous conditions in a hot and noisy factory. The Dorrance family, founders of Campbell's, made an immense amount of profit while lowering the costs of production.

The initial union strikes' intention was to gain union recognition, which they earned in 1940. Several other strikes would follow the next several decades, all demanding reasonable pay. Campbell’s started hiring seasonal workers, immigrants, and Contingent Labor, the latter of which they would fire 8 weeks after hiring.

[ The below goes directly after "In 1876, Anderson left the partnership and the company became the "Joseph A. Campbell Preserve Company"" on the Campbell's page]

Article in the Courier Post (1900) announcing the shutdown of Campbell's Camden factory

The shutdown of Campbell’s Camden plant No. 1 was announced in 1989 and production stopped on the night of March 1, 1991. The following day, the plant was officially closed. It was demolished on November 1, 1991. Plants in Pocomoke City (Maryland), Crisfield (Maryland), and Smyrna (Tennessee) also shut down.

Plant No.2, originally a tomato-processing plant, shut down in 1980. It was responsible for about 35% of all Campbell's products in the 1950s. Products included pork and beans, tomato juice, V-8 vegetable juice, Franco-American spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, and of course soups (notably: beans and bacon, cream of mushroom, cream of celery, and cream of asparagus)

Campbell's Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Potato, and Tomato soups

A total of 2,800 jobs were lost, 940-1,000 of those jobs from the Camden plant. Campbell's agreed to give workers one week's payment for each year of employment as well as paying in full for six months of medical benefits, and paying half the cost for another six months. Salaried workers received one week's pay for each year of employment. Production was moved to plants in Napoleon (Ohio), Paris (Texas), and Maxton (North Carolina).