
          Today's Jobs at Yesterday's Wages: GM's Saturn Auto Plant
Arrives in Spring Hill, Tennessee
          By Garber, CarterCarter Garber and Fausey, VernaVerna Fausey
          Vol. 8, No. 4, 1986, pp. 16-24
          
          Spring Hill Mayor George Jones says he learned the same time you
did, if you were watching television on July 30, 1985, that General
Motors planned to build the world's most expensive manufacturing plant
in his middle Tennessee community, population 1,275. By that point
GM's Saturn plant had been the object of a seven-month industrial
recruiting contest involving a thousand sites in thirty-six states, a
parade of governors bearing gifts, and impassioned pleas from chambers
of commerce, local citizens and schoolchildren. But Saturn didn't go
to New_York, which offered the billion-dollar bargain of one hundred
megawatts of free electricity for twenty years, or to Minnesota, which
pledged tax concessions and other prizes worth $1.3 billion, or even
to Kentucky, which legislated a $306 millon educational aid package
after word got out that GM considered the Bluegrass State's school
system inadequate.
          Instead, Saturn came to a sleepy town off I-65 thirty miles south
of Nashville. At the moment Mayor Jones watched GM's announcement on
his television set, Spring Hill had not even a single full-time police
officer, fireman, or physician. The announcement, said Jones, was like
something "falling from the sky."
          Spring Hill's experience raises many questions about corporate
power in the U.S., about industrial recruiting as practiced by most
state governments, about the role of organized labor in a rapidly
shifting economy, and about the ability of localities to control their
own destinies.
          
            Were They Just Lucky or What?
          
          In effect, Tennessee won a national lottery for a promised 6,000
industrial jobs and a huge addition to the tax base. After the
amazement wore off, one of the first questions asked in Spring Hill
was, why us? The answer may be that GM was less interested in what
Spring Hill had than in what it did not have: the area decidedly
lacked experience in negotiating with large companies, other prospects
for economic_development, county-wide planning or zoning, organized
citizen groups which might have opposed GM's plans or at least have
complicated matters, and the history of labor-management antagonism
that characterizes many of the locales of other auto plants.
          Spring Hill residents are minor actors, if not pawns, in a grand
auto industry manuever. General Motors' plans for Saturn represent the
company's main effort to 

face down Japanese car competition. GM
created the Saturn Corporation as a subsidiary--with its own
executives, engineers, dealer network--and a "special" labor
contract. The Saturn plant will use computer and robot technology to
produce half a million subcompact Saturn cars a year with about
one-third of the workforce that would be needed at other GM
facilities. Board Chairman Roger Smith touts Saturn as the key to the
giant corporation's survival and competitiveness as a domestic
producer.
          Construction of the Spring Hill plant will require four thousand
construction workers for two-and-a-half years. Limited production is
expected to begin in late 1989. When the plant reaches full capacity
(some years later), GM claims that it will provide six thousand direct
jobs and twelve thousand to fourteen thousand indirect jobs among
suppliers, service firms, groceries, eating places and motels.
          In choosing Middle Tennessee, GM joined a Southbound migration for
automakers, including a Nissan plant at Smyrna, Tenn., just thirty
miles from Spring Hill, and Kentucky's planned Toyota
facility. Michigan has gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve its
hold on the industry, but the mid-South has become the location of
choice for both U.S. and Japanese carmakers.
          In addition to presumably docile labor, Spring Hill was chosen
because it lies within five-hundred miles of three-fourths of the
U.S. domestic market. The area had a railroad, interstates, and could
provide four million gallons of water daily. Geographically it is a
flat site about two square miles in size. In the rural setting, there
were a small number of landowners from whom to acquire land.
          "The final ingredients were simple but of the right combination,"
according to Jan White of Landauer Associates. This New_York firm
which researched the sites for GM never revealed the nature of that
secret combination. For seven months, Landauer employees visited
potential locations, examined tax structures and school systems, went
to parks, and read back editions of local newspapers to determine how
each community solved their problems.
          With so many suitors, GM could take its time. The national media
provided millions of dollars of free advertising for the future car. A
GM-commissioned poll showed that Saturn had 49 percent name
recognition without building a plant or even designing a product. This
public relations triumph, achieved largely because of U.S. desperation
for jobs, is proudly heralded by Saturn's executives.
          By early February 1985, GM had information about every realistic
location "already on the computer," according to Stan Hall, a Saturn
spokesperson. Peter Laerman of the United Auto Workers (UAW) chastised
the corporation for encouraging a waste of public resources. "In cases
where GM knows perfectly well those sites will not be chosen, they
should make that clear before any more money is spent." But GM kept up
the "search" for another five months as desperate hamlets bid higher
for the prize.
          The site GM chose is in Maury County, just a few miles from its
border with Williamson County. The latter is Tennessee's richest and
fastest growing county with an unemployment rate of 3.1 percent in
July of 1986. Williamson County Executive Robert Ring says of Saturn,
"It's definitely not good for our county. I wish they had gone
somewhere else." Williamson County residents are concerned about the
rapid changes in their county which is evolving from an agricultural
to a bedroom community feeding metro Nashville's booming "office
parks." The result is a controversial growth management plan that is
unprecedented in laissez-faire Tennessee. 
          In Maury County, with 9.6 percent unemployment, the planning
infrastructure was non-existent. Judy Langston, a county native who
was hired when the planning office was finally set up three months
after the Saturn announcement, explains: "Maury County government did
not have any land use controls, policies or plan. We did not have any
zoning or subdivision controls at all and there was not a planning
commission as such." Langston and the commission have worked quickly
"to get the county ready to start dealing with the growth that's
coming." But while this unpreparedness worked to GM's advantage in
many ways, it led to the defeat of an attempt by Saturn to head off an
unsightly commercial strip next to its "campus-style plant." Even
though Saturn hired the Vanderbilt Law School Dean to work with the
county to develop a scenic parkway, the old neighbors quickly let
their new neighbor and politicians know that it would be a long time
before they would tolerate that much "governmental interference."
          
            What Did Tennessee Offer?
          
          Governor Lamar Alexander trumpeted his state's victory in full-page
newspaper ads published around the country. The considerable prize was
said to be the largest one-time investment in U.S. history, and Saturn
thus took on mythical dimensions and qualities far beyond the jobs and
related industries it will bring to Middle Tennessee. To Tennessee's
Republican administrators, Saturn testified to the state's
attractiveness to manufacturing investors and to their own competitive
ability in the politically prime arena of industrial recruitment.

          Alexander and former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker had lauded
Tennessee's right-to-work law, its "pro-business climate and its
hardworking labor force" to GM Chairman Smith in early 1985. These
same factors were among the reasons the Southern Labor Institute
ranked Tennessee as the fourth-worst climate for workers in the
nation, but they made the state look good to GM and other
companies. The governor and senator may not have actually mentioned
it, but Smith's computers would have told him Tennessee was in the
bottom twenty percent of states in terms of maximum benefits for
disability and unemployment, and statutory protections for
workers. Nor would the wage demands be likely to be great from
citizens of a state ranked forty-second in the incidence of working
poor and near the bottom in manufacturing wages and income
distribution. Since Tennessee is projected to have higher than
national unemployment at least through the 1990s, this would be a
state which would appreciate GM, whatever its pay and benefits, for a
long time to come.
          Tennessee also was promoted as a state whose tax structure has been
tailored for big business: a one percent investment tax credit for
industrial machinery, no sales tax on industrial and pollution control
machinery, a tax exemption on finished goods, low worker's
compensation insurance rate, and no personal income tax. Over
forty-nine percent of the state's regressive tax revenue comes from
high sales taxes, including a tax on food.
          Tennessee's industrial recruiting ads say, "Grow with a
pro-business tax structure. Only four states have a lower state and
local tax burden than Tennessee. Tennessee does not offer large tax
concessions to attract business to the state--the tax structure is
already attractive for business!"
          With the nation watching and his 1988 Vice Presidential aspirations
perhaps in mind, Tennessee's governor eagerly courted the
industrialists. Alexander had won one such prize in 1982-the Nissan
plant- and wanted another. (Nissan made the largest U.S. industrial
investment by a Japanese company in a highly automated truck assembly
plant in Smyrna, thirty miles from Spring Hill.) The earlier success
may have helped guarantee the second win. If GM wanted to prove it
could compete with the Japanese, why not on the same turf? And the
UAW, GM's partner in Saturn, may have desired to locate nearby in
hopes that Saturn's union influence would rub off on non-union
Nissan.
          
            Greasing GM's Wheels
          
          In a less than candid statement, Alexander contended, "New_York
offered $1.2 billion. We didn't offer a penny."
          But Tennessee's General_Assembly rushed to provide housewarming
gifts to the new corporate arrival. In early 1986 Maury County
legislators introduced a bill to put a $500,000 cap on the realty
transfer tax and another cap on mortgage fees. Written to benefit very
large plants "such as Saturn," the bill was the result of a prior
agreement among legislators, Saturn officials and the governor. The
state lost a one time payment of $2.5 million to $3 million while
local governments lost $75,000. Alexander also pushed through the
Legislature a seat belt law wanted by GM to help forestall national
air bag legislation.
          In addition to the usual benevolence to large corporations, the
governor has promised Saturn $50 million worth of roads, including a
new I-65 exit and a new five-mile connecting "Saturn parkway" (much
like that built for Nissan). Saturn will get its cars to market faster
with a proposed $135 million expressway loop south of
Nashville. Spring Hill is getting a bypass, two stop lights,
state-paid planners and engineers. Tennessee pays for water quality
and regional impact studies. Saturn will receive and control $20
million worth of job training, with no requirement that Tennesseans
will be trained.
          Justifying all this is Revenue Commissioner Don Jackson, who
optimistically predicts that Tennessee may get ten dollars in tax
revenues for every dollar it spends on support facilities for
Saturn. The state's sales tax revenues will increase when Saturn
begins to meet its $200-million-a-year payroll four years from now,
but several more years will pass before the state realizes other tax
dollars. Business tax income was not coming in from the Nissan plant
by 1985, even though Nissan began production in 1983. Moreover, while
the state 

government may eventually experience a return on its
investment in Saturn, Saturn's neighbors fear that the bulk of the
costs will be borne by the taxpayers of the counties and
municipalities.
          Meanwhile, many Maury County citizens wonder just who will act in their best interest. Many feel that their local
officials failed to represent all of Maury County when negotiating the
in-lieu-of-tax agreement with GM. Many more, including many local
officials, wonder whose side the state is on when it comes to the
negotiating with Saturn and to the planning for the trauma of its
arrival.
          
            Will Tennesseans Get the Jobs?
          
          Much of the intense courting of Saturn was inspired by the lure of
thousands of new jobs.
          In November 1985, four months after Saturn's site selection, a copy
of the secret labor agreement between GM and the United Auto workers
was leaked to the Spring Hill Area Concerned Citizens Group. It
revealed that aa majority of the full initial complement of operating
and skilled technicians in Saturn will come from GM-UAW units
throughout the United_States." The document concludes that "because of
the qualifications and experience of the current GM-UAW workforce,
they will be a primary source for the initial complement, up to full
capacity of operating and skilled trades technicians. The parties will
actively recruit GM-UAW employees."
          This news stunned Maury County officials, who had made large tax
concessions expecting the majority of jobs for area residents. The
Citizens Group leaders had been asking since early September for
eighty percent of the Saturn workforce to come from the county and the
state. GM says it made no promises.

          Not surprisingly, UAW Vice President Donald Ephlin has reported
that union members all over the country are interested in the Saturn
jobs. "We don't need applications. Every day I get letters inquiring
about employment," he said. Ephlin predicts that of the estimated six
thousand jobs about five thousand will be in the UAW bargaining
unit. These could be filled ten times over by the fifty-four thousand
UAW members now laid off, not to mention the forty-one thousand GM
says it may soon lay off or the current GM workers who may want to
move when Saturn begins hiring.
          Many local people resent outsiders' having a lock on the majority
of Saturn's jobs. GM has quietly let its Saturn partner, the union, be
played off against the local communities so that the UAW is faulted by
many as having taken the jobs Maury County residents thought were to
be their main benefit from Saturn.
          Spring Hill resident and fiberglass manufacturer Jim Miller said,
"the governor kept talking about at least three thousand jobs." But,
"once we read the agreement we knew we could not get any jobs out of
the project." He added, "the governor and GM 'foxed' people on jobs."
Miller asked the governor why no Tennesseans were guaranteed jobs and
"Dear old Alexander said that if not one Tennessean gets a job at
Saturn, it will still be good for Tennessee. Now that may be good for
Tennessee, but what about Maury County?"
          
            GM Unwilling to Pay Full Property Tax
          
          Tennessee helped Saturn choose a county with lower property rates
than surrounding areas. Saturn then hammered Maury County governmental
officials into an unprecedented forty year in-lieu-of-tax
agreement. According to county budget director, A. C. Howell, "the
forty-year term was the toughest part and the part that the county
disliked most about the deal. We really didn't want a forty-year
deal. It was a GM idea and they took pretty much a hard line on it."
GM's leverage was that its choice of this county was "tentative" until
it got the deal it sought. By withholding the labor agreement from the
public and county officials, GM had a further advantage in
negotiations.
          Maury County's industrial board agreed to hold title to the site so
Saturn is not burdened with real and personal property taxes, the
county's primary revenue source. The first year Saturn agreed to pay
$7.5 million; in 1987 and 1988, $3.5 million each year; from 1989 to
1995, $3 million each year; and from 1996 to 2025, the rate rises from
twenty-five percent to forty percent of the standard property tax
rate. The county was pleased at being able to negotiate the larger
amounts of funds up front since normally the property tax would not
show up in significant amounts until the plant was fully built. "The
plan of action is to use the front end money to handle the initial
impacts. Then we'll have to develop some mechanisms to make sure
future developers have to pay their own way," said Howell.
          Local residents and officials were skeptical of the deal since most
"high growth" counties find it impossible to make developers cover all
the costs of new services. If Saturn doesn't pay for expanded services
and if the developers who follow Saturn to Maury County don't pay, who
will? The residents of Maury County, who currently enjoy a low two
percent property tax rate, expect that they will have to pick up the
tab.
          Despite being spelled out in an official agreement there are still
different estimates of just how much the county has given away to
GM. Auto industry watcher Ralph Nader has estimated that the
in-lieu-of-tax deal will cost Maury County almost $57 million during
the first ten years. Budget director Howell figures that if the plant
as proposed is built "the full tax value would have been $14 million"
annually, a figure less than half the $32.9 million detailed in
published reports elsewhere. Even if Howell is accurate, this means
that after construction GM will pay $77 million less than the normal
county tax rate during the seven year period from 1989-1995.
          Nader staffer Jim Musselman said Maury County officials failed to
compare what GM said it was willing to pay in property tax with what
it was already paying at its facilities in Michigan and Ohio. GM
wasn't about to volunteer that it pays almost twice as much tax on
smaller plants. Howell said county officials talked to officials in
few other places during the six to eight weeks of negotiations, but he
wishes there had been more time for research. While GM clearly
benefited from the pressure of time it applied, Howell says the
greatest urgency came from state officials who wanted an agreement to
be reached but nevertheless offered very little assistance.
          On February 28, 1986, Saturn ceremoniously made its first payment
of $2 million. Its next checks were delivered in late May and
September to the Maury County Industrial Development Board. Posing in
front of the enlarged check, Howell wondered whether he should smile
or frown. It probably is not the best deal in the world but when you
go to buy a car you don't get the deal you want. I can't tell whether
it was a good deal or not. I think it was as good a deal as we could
have gotten... History will tell."
          Maury County found that, once the negotiations on an overall amount
from Saturn were concluded, the wrangling had just begun. Separate
agreements had to be made to divide its new revenues with the
incorporated towns of Spring Hill, Columbia, and Mount Pleasant. The
various county departments openly squabbled over the remainder. The
School Board has even threatened to sue to get its standard
forty-seven percent of county taxes.
          Even with its own discounted rate Saturn has become Maury County's
largest taxpayer; its nearest contender pays less than a third of GM's
amount. Saturn's employees will double the county's 1985 manufacturing
labor force, giving the new constituents tremendous political clout in
a county which was projected to have only 25,375 households in
1990.
          Further, GM's actions in other parts of the nation suggest that
Maury County will be asked in the future for more tax cuts. GM has
demanded real property tax reductions of up to eighty percent in
eighteen Michigan locations and has threatened to move its plants if
the cuts are not forthcoming. Four Michigan towns have 

already given
in. "For GM the Saturn plant represents another step in its ongoing
experiment to discover just how far it can lower its tax obligations,"
concludes labor writer Anthony Borden in The Nation
(June 21,1986).
          
            Will the Town Get its Fair Share?
          
          "More and more it looks like GM came to this rural area of
Tennessee looking for a colony to exploit instead of a community to
respect," said Ralph Nader. "The Volunteer State better start
volunteering more citizen and governmental oversight and get the
free-loading GM off welfare."
          "Let's be honest. The plant is going to affect us the most," Spring
Hill Mayor Jones exclaimed in late August 1985. "We're the ones who
are going to be dealing with the traffic and having our roads and our
land and our homes torn apart. Nobody seems to be interested in Spring
Hill."
          Martha Torrence, a school teacher who moved from Nashville to
retire in Spring Hill and is secretary of the Spring Hill Citizen's
Group, said of Saturn's first year, "We just can't understand why
we've been ignored, they forgot about us, just like we were dust to be
moved around."
          For several weeks, the state officials, Saturn and the UAW ignored
the mayor's letters and requests for a meeting with the townspeople to
explain what was going on and to answer citizen's questions. Only in
September 1985, when Mayor Jones warned that he might oppose zoning
changes needed for initial construction, did the three agree to the
town meeting.
          Spring Hill's annual property tax revenue was around $21,000 before
any GM payments. A recent property reappraisal had the effect of a
major tax hike and Mayor Jones did not want to raise taxes so soon to
pay for new facilities. When the mayor's efforts to get a financial
commitment from the county and GM failed, the city council began the
procedure to annex the Saturn site, just two miles outside the city
limits. This would have brought the town an estimated $8.5 million
annually, instead of the $11.5 million over a forty-year period to
which they eventually agreed.
          Upon learning about the annexation plan, Saturn's general counsel
threatened that GM would leave the Spring Hill area before the company
had turned one shovel of dirt. "I don't know if I'd call it
blackmail," Mayor Jones told the Flint (Mich.) Journal. "I have heard
accusations before that if we don't do this or that Saturn will pull
out." Jones reports that during this period he received a number of
death threats from developers who were panicked they would lose
anticipated substantial profits if GM did not come.
          Spring Hill's threat to annex Saturn's property, followed by
Saturn's threat to leave, is credited with giving the town enough
leverage with Maury County to get a large part of the in-lieu-of-tax
money. For $250,000 annually, Spring Hill committed itself in writing
not to annex the Saturn site. Mayor Jones is adamant that the
annexation proposal is merely tabled and will be activated if the
county fails to pay.
          
            Speculators Descend
          
          "We didn't have any real estate offices in Spring Hill before
Saturn hit. The next day we had five," says Joan W. Jackson, the
manager of the only branch bank in town. "Land speculators blew into
town with money in hand, bought land, and flipped it." Two months
after the announcement, land values had risen from $1,000 to $2,000
per acre to $5,000 to $10,000 per acre, with some acreage selling as
high as $35,000. Activity tripled at the county's Register of Deeds,
which collected more than a million dollars in recording fees and
transfer taxes.
          During the early "gold rush fever," the mayor distributed signs "My
home is not for sale. Compliments of George Jones, Mayor." He
explained, Y want my neighbors to know I want to keep them."
          By Spring 1986 real estate activity had slowed to a trickle. Many
local people only made money as the outsiders let their options
expire. Real estate agents and bankers predict a second boom as soon
as the town's bypass location is announced and when Saturn plant

construction begins.
          As the unemployed began to come to the boomtown, Mayor Jones and
the Board of Aldermen bought them one-way tickets to Columbia or
Nashville. The bus doesn't stop in Spring Hill, but a policeman takes
the indigent newcomers to Main Street and flags it down. Legal
Services personnel worry that the bus trip may await some local people
as well. After Nissan was built local people with low_incomes became
homeless as the property values rose.
          "The rental situation here is already deplorable," says Bill Haley,
Legal Services director in Maury County. "The trailer parks, which
will be the primary places available for the transient construction
workers, have outrageous lease provisions, which allow landlords to
seize the personal possessions of the tenants if they don't pay
up. We're going to see local people evicted, as the landlords jack up
rents to lease to outsiders. Every county in the area has a long
waiting list for low-income housing now. With the tremendous real
estate pressures, homelessness is going to be an overwhelming problem
and the counties are doing little to address it."
          The arrival of the county's largest taxpayer frightens local
residents who wonder whether they can afford to stay. Rising land
values will increase taxes at the same time as the demand for new
services calls for increased county revenues. While the mayor is proud
of his negotiations with the county, he feels the negotiations between
the county and Saturn "were very poorly handled." Mayor Jones, a
contractor, draws an analogy with his trade. "A lot of people underbid
just to get the job. But when you've got to pay a dollar and a quarter
to get a one dollar job, you're talking one step backwards and it's
not good business. If it's going to cost us more to have them here
than we're going to get in return, then I think we're making a big
mistake."
          "It will be the people on fixed income who will suffer," says Mayor
Jones. Citizen's group leader Martha Torrence agrees: "We who are
trying to continue here might have to move out of the area because of
taxes."
          Homeowners are not the only victims. Randy Lockridge, who farms a
thousand acres, declares that Saturn, named for the Roman god of
agriculture, "will ruin farming in Spring Hill and have a negative
effect on farming in all of Maury County."
          Dairy equipment supplier John Campbell, president of the Citizens
Group, agrees that "farming's a thing of the past in Spring Hill." The
town's farm implement dealership is already closed, and the rapidly
rising land prices seem to affirm his conclusion.
          "Many people in the community who were in favor of the project have
now turned against it after seeing the way GM operates," said
Campbell.
          In the wake of recent elections, Jim Cathey, a landowner, said, "We
really should be voting on getting that plant here."
          Cathey's words echo the thoughts of thousands of Southerners who
suddenly are faced with the rapid changes and unintended results of
development decisions made secretively by a few state or local
officials in pressured negotiating sessions with outside giant
corporations. There are no mechanisms for public participation, much
less approval.
          
            State Needed to Manage Growth
          
          Governor Alexander has used the Nissan and Saturn catches to
catapult himself into the National Governor's Association Chairmanship
and to national political prominence great enough to cause talk about
an Alexander role in the White_House. Alexander has 90 tied his image
to the Saturn project that he quips: "If it's shelved, they'll shelve
me right along with it." More than $460,000 of state funds have been
spent on Saturn-oriented public relations in which media professionals
have crafted Alexander's positive, concerned image. Yet near the plant
site, among officials and citizens alike, few are Alexander
boosters.
          "We don't understand the governor letting such a thing come into
our state. We think he should have said, "Okay, but give us so many
jobs," complains Martha Torrence. Mayor Jones's struggles to get the
governor's attention are well known. Alexander committed the state to
paying for the town's planning, abut every time a bill comes up they
want to give a run around getting it paid." Adds County official
Howell, "We really feel like they should have helped us more in
planning. The city of Columbia and the county are entitled to the same
thing Spring Hill was. I think they gave more to Spring Hill to hold
down the press situation. We weren't making that much noise so they
didn't have to do anything to quiet us down."
          The Saturn mishandling by the state led to a fundamental
questioning of the state's conduct of industrial recruitment by
representatives of other localities, including the Tennessee Municipal
Bond Fund vice president, Ed Young.
          "What role should the state play in helping local governments deal
with a mushrooming situation like this involving a major international
corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, some seven or eight
municipalities, several counties, a couple of development districts,
at least a dozen state departments and agencies, and numerous other
entities such as school and utility districts?" Young asks. Recruiting
success is just the first step in a process-not the final one."
          "There were a number of task forces the governor appointed in the
Spring Hill situation. They had one on transportation, one on water
and sewer, but there was not the overall coordination of these
functions. Only the governor can provide that," said Young. "State
officials must begin to develop an institutionalized memory and
expertise regarding growth management so that the right things are
done by the right people at the right time and the mistakes of the
past are avoided."
          
            Making Modern Mythology
          
          The Saturn myth is far more important than the Saturn reality to
all concerned. This is why, what in reality is one more branch plant
locating in the rural South, has captured the national imagination.
          To the company, the Saturn myth represents a 

resurgence in
thirty-eight states of the time-worn notion that "what's good for GM
is good for the country." GM has found that even corporate giants can
be given the aid and comfort Americans usually reserve for underdogs
in the nationalistic crusade to beat the foreign competition (some of
which is owned by GM).
          The legendary dimensions of Saturn have built political careers and
justified raids on public treasuries from the county's to the
nation's. Even in the latest tax "reform" bill, the deficit-ridden
Congress showed its support by writing in a special $60 million
tax-break specifically for Saturn.
          For the union and the industry the Saturn myth has come to
symbolize the "pattern for the Twenty-first Century industrial
operation." No matter that eighty percent of it is already in
practice. The union is willing to forego hard-fought contract elements
like seniority and grievance systems for a chance to be a partner in
this undertaking of mythic proportions.
          Saturn's shiny, state-of-the-art features mesh with the public's
desire to believe in reindustrialization--that the glories of Henry
Ford's revolution can come back in a high-tech form.
          For Tennessee and Maury County Saturn's myth is that the industrial
recruitment lottery can be won. There is now hope that young_people
will not have to leave their rural homes to find jobs. There is the
illusion that our local and state officials are in charge even as they
carry out decisions made in distant corporate boardrooms.
          Despite the tremendous odds against them, communities across
America have gone into a period of self-flagellation and blame that GM
did not choose them. Most have learned nothing from the massive
expenditures of time and money. They have fallen back on the losers
dictim: "Try harder next time."
          The desperate desire to win justifies all public actions on the
basis of what they will do for industrial recruitment. In the wake of
the Saturn success, the governor's State of the State speech instilled
fear in the legislature that, if they don't pass his three billion
dollar roads program--"jobs corridors"--they would lose the Saturn
suppliers to one of the eleven other states within two hundred-fifty
miles of the new plant site. Similarly, better schools, higher sales
taxes, and a myriad of other unrelated governmental items are
justified to Americans by industrial recruitment.
          Why are Americans so vulnerable to such mythology? There simply are
not enough jobs to go around. Saturn has proven that states, and even
unions, are willing to do most anything for jobs. A relative few is
all Saturn will really provide. While the optimistic twenty thousand
eventual plant and related jobs sounds impressive, Governor Alexander
in more candid moments indicates that two hundred thousand jobs, or
ten percent of the state's workforce, are lost annually to plant
closings, bankruptcies and shutdowns. Saturn's total job impact-ten
percent of what is lost annually in one state-is thus miniscule.
          Few will bother to look beyond the comforting myths at the reality
when industrial recruitment succeeds. Maury County now is a living
example-and the real effects will not be known for years.
          What is known is that the three reasons for industrial
recruitment--jobs for locals, a better tax 

base, and community
improvement and an era of progress for those who reside there - have
not materialized. Many long-term residents have little hope that they
ever will.
          "Tomorrow's Jobs, Yesterday's Values" is the new Tennessee state
slogan. At eighty percent of the industry standard pay, Saturn will
surely bring yesterday's wages. A tax rate less than a third of normal
promises a reprise of yesteryear's company town scenario. Which of
yesterday's values are being preserved?
          Saturn is preserving yesterday's elements that corporations
value--a docile, concession-prone workforce located in a community
already nervous by every rumor that its corporate benefactor may leave
or is having financial woes.
          In self-appreciation festivals in each of Tennessee's ninety-five
counties, citizens are gathering to learn about and celebrate their
past as part of Homecoming 1986. Despite the attempted parallels
between the early pioneers and those charting the frontiers of Saturn,
there is a real awareness that something is being forgotten, something
irretrievably lost in Tennessee.
          What about the values of self reliance, of community-building. of
democratic local decision-making, of charting one's own economic
destiny? Tennesseans may remember that their foreparents came here to
escape their economic dependence on the Saturns of yesteryear.
          Amidst the booths demonstrating barnraisings, furnituremaking,
spinning, and even moonshining, Tennesseans may get in touch with the
real values needed to put all our unemployed citizens and resources
back to work. While this may at first seem naive, economists say the
majority of new jobs are being produced by small businesses, not by
large corporations. Tennessee's Economic and Community Development
Department, despite its almost exclusive emphasis on industrial
recruitment, documents that over a five-year period almost seventy
percent of the state's new manufacturing jobs were from Tennessee
firms expanding or starting up.
          As the 999 sites which didn't get Saturn ponder Maury County's
situation, maybe they should be grateful. If they can wean themselves
from the Saturn myth, they have a chance to proactively develop their
economy rather than reactively awaiting the next announcement from a
far-off corporate boardroom.
          The states, counties, and cities have shown they are willing to
subsidize every step of a company's business -build the roads, provide
all the social and physical services, do the planning and growth
management, subsidize the utilities, provide job training, waive the
taxes, own the factory and land, and sometimes pay the initial wages -
taking all the risks. It's time public entities use these resources to
support locally-generated forms of economic_development which will
hire local people, complement the ways of life of current residents,
and build a stable local tax base and economy.
          
            Carter Garber is the founder of Southern Neighborhoods
Network, a regional organization providing training and assistance to
community economic_development groups. Verna Fausey is editor of the
regional bimonthly Southern Neighborhoods, and the
founder of Public Interest Research. Garber and Fausey co-edit the
Community Economic Reporter, a bimonthly o' economic
issues in Tennessee. The authors wish to thank Paul Elwood, a member
of their editorial board, who assisted with interviewing, research,
and editing. Research funding was provided by National Rural Coalition
as well as SNN's Economic Development Policy Project.
          
        
