By Doug Cunningham Workers Independent News   When Pittsburgh’s GM stamping plant closed UAW Local 544 workers felt its gut-wrenching devastation  – the result, they believe, of U.S. global trade policies coming home to roost. It’s a story that’s been sadly playing out for a couple of decades now nationwide, not only in the auto industry but for the whole American manufacturing sector.  Local 544 Financial Secretary Jeff Hall was one of the last few to leave the plant in an emotional goodbye. [Hall]: “People cryin’, you know, it was hard. It was really hard. I worked there 28 years. I had a lot of friends, you know, I was an officer in this local for 16 years. I knew everybody. Yeah, difficult times. There was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of stress. I developed heart palpitations, I lost sleep. You know, it’s not an easy thing.” Rick Mismas chaired the bargaining unit at the local. [Mismas]: “It was traumatic in a lot of cases. We didn’t have any divorces and thank God we didn’t have any suicides, but that’s a normal event that occurs when these plants close because, you know, you  kind of pulled the rug out from under a whole bunch of people.” Ed Kasprisin says this plant closing has meant years of turmoil and stress ever since the plant closing notice was given. [Kasprisin]: “Since 2005, November 21st 2005  ‘til this day I’ve had no normality in my life for four years.” Ken Mihoces says the destruction of U.S. manufacturing and of its good middle class jobs is nothing less than the death of the American Dream. [Mihoces]: “My father put four kids through college and he never worked more than forty hours a week. The American Dream is to go do that, buy a house and pay the house off. People can’t buy houses anymore. If you’re making $20 an hour even – that’s $40,000 a year. If you have a house and you’re making $800 a month house payments and taxes and food and educating your kids you can’t live. We need a living wage for people.” As UAW Local 544 workers struggled with their loss anger boiled over, too. Recording Secretary Kathy Kling, who is battling thyroid cancer, is angry with politicians who have no clue what it’s like for workers who have to live with the economic consequences of trade policies and a health care system that enrich corporations while impoverishing millions of American workers. [Kling]: “It’s time to get rid of free trade. Free trade needs to go. We need fair trade in this country because there is no country in this world that could outwork our workers with fair trade. I have a really good way to get these people in congress to get off their dead asses and do something. Wal-Mart is now the biggest employer in the country. It’s time for Congress to live on Wal-Mart wages and Wal-Mart health care. Let them see what more people in this country have to live with. They’ve been eroding and eroding our standard of living for the last ten, fifteen years. And everybody just seems to roll over and say give me more! We need to get these people off their dead rear-ends and realize the worker is what makes this country.” Kling says with wages going down as the cost of living goes up, pensions are also under attack. [Kling 2]: “And now they want people to not have a pension. Well how the hell can you afford health care, put money in a 401k, pay your bills - on 9 bucks an hour? How can you do that?” Many UAW Local 544 workers managed to retire as the Pittsburgh stamping plant closed. They don’t believe that they somehow helped cause the U.S. auto industry’s woes by winning good pay and benefits over the years. They think the UAW and U.S. cars are both getting bad raps from people who believe American cars are no good and autoworkers are overpaid. Rick Mismas says trade policies that led to the loss of domestic market share is what sank the American auto industry. He says Congress could have stopped that from happening like the European Union did. [Mismas]: “They don’t have problems such as this because they told the importers, if you will, the Toyotas, Hondas, whoever – that you have sixteen and a half percent of the European market – period.” Steve Granus says anybody who believes autoworkers have it easy has never been near an assembly line. [Granus]: “I had to have both of my hands operated on for carpal tunnel. And I didn’t even work on the assembly line and do the really hard work. And anybody that never was exposed to that environment, they hear all this bull that comes out of the media about how we’re just a bunch of prima donnas and General Motors is in trouble because we’re not pullin’ our end of it. They’ve never seen what a man does on the assembly line.” UAW auto assembly workers earned an average of about $28 dollars an hour. The skilled trades workers in Local 544 earned close to $5,000 a month before taxes. New hires at GM are now paid as little as $14 an hour. As the new GM tries to rebound, Pittsburgh’s former stamping plant workers urge Americans to buy the high-quality American cars that are being built today and not let the U.S. auto industry die. Kathy Kling is fed up with the misconceptions many people have about union autoworkers and although Local 544 lost the battle to save their plant, she sounds a call to arms to American workers to reclaim the American Dream. [Kling]: “Everybody thinks we don’t work, we do work. They all call us lazy. We’re not lazy. We’re the best work force in the world. We work, we bust our asses. It’s time to take this country back for the middle class. We need a middle class back!”