Suburban company shutting doors, ending a way of life for hundreds

For 26 years, Ruben Mendoza worked 12-hour days, pouring white-hot molten metal to make car parts and power tools.

Few people using the results of his labor had heard of the company Mendoza worked for, Lunt Manufacturing. Yet, when a driver gripped the steering wheel of a Pontiac Trans-Am or a carpenter fired a Bostitch nail gun, they used Lunt's products. And Mendoza was proud of what he made.

By working overtime, he paid for his son to go to college. He hoped to do the same for his two teenage daughters. But now that Lunt is going out of business, that's not happening.

Like more than 200 of his co-workers, Mendoza is losing his job. Without a college education himself, and with gray hair filling his moustache, Mendoza may have to find a new career.

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"For so many years, I feel like this company is part of my life," he said. "Now I have to start all over again someplace."

A victim of global economic forces, Lunt plans to close its plants in Schaumburg and Hampshire Friday after 34 years in business.

The company is one of several large businesses shutting down factories this winter and laying off workers in Chicago's suburbs. Others include Solo Cup in Wheeling, Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago and Krack Corp. in Addison.

It's part of a nationwide exodus that has seen 3 million manufacturing jobs leave the United States in the past decade.

Hundreds of Lunt workers -- many of them immigrants -- had labored there as a way to pay for the American Dream of buying a house and making a better life for their children.

As Lunt founder Helmut Brandt, a German immigrant himself, explained, manufacturing had always offered good jobs for trade workers who couldn't speak English well upon arrival.

"You want to be a salesman, you have to know the language pretty well," he said. "But if you have the knowledge how to make something, that's where you have a big opportunity to make something in this country."

Now, many employees may have to shelve their specialized skills and take jobs that pay poorly and offer reduced benefits.

One manager with the expertise to construct buildings will resort to landscaping and snowplowing; another lifelong industrial worker will try farming; and many are anxiously writing resumes for the first time in their lives.

Amid endless anonymous corporate layoffs, Lunt's workers put a face on the human side of our economy. They are left to struggle with the effects of our nation's never-ending appetite for importing cheap goods while shipping blue-collar jobs overseas.

An impressive success story just two years ago, Lunt has suddenly become a relic of a disappearing era of manufacturing in America.

Born of fire

With his full white beard, a fisherman's cap and the remnants of a German accent, Helmut Brandt carries the air of a ship's captain. He walks the floor of his plants every day, greeting workers with a broad smile and checking how things are running.

He learned his trade as a die-maker in Germany, came to the U.S. in 1961 and opened a machine shop in Schaumburg. When two of his customers wanted to start a die-casting shop, they chose Brandt as a partner to run it. He eventually took over controlling ownership.

The secret to Brandt's success was making a product that others were afraid to touch.

He made parts out of magnesium -- a material that's strong and light but can be very volatile. High school chemistry students may recall lighting thin ribbons of the metal with a match, producing blinding white flames.

As proof of its volatility, in 1977, magnesium scraps and cardboard caught fire at Lunt's Schaumburg plant. When firefighters sprayed water on it, it only fed the flames. The blaze spread and burned down the plant, though no workers were hurt.

With insurance money, Lunt was able to rebuild, and the business grew.

To contain its dangerous raw material, Lunt melts magnesium in vats, then streams inert gas on top to keep it from igniting.

Still, within its cauldrons, tongues of fire flicker from the surface of a white soup. When workers reach into the vats to scoop out a ladle of the stuff, bright sparks and flames shoot out.

Beads of sweat form on workers' foreheads and drip from their faces as they pour the 4,000-degree metal into molds. It's such hot work, one new recruit once quit before lunch time.

But most workers stayed for the steady work and the overtime, which paid time-and-a-half, and double time on Sundays.

As it expanded, the company evolved from a speculative start-up to a leader in its field, raking in $70 million in revenue and employing 550 people at its peak in 2005.

After building a second plant in Hampshire, Brandt demonstrated the dangerous properties of magnesium for the volunteer fire department, burning it in a barrel, then showing how water only creates more explosive flames, before putting it out with sand.

While the company never had another fire, there was one burning problem it couldn't put out: rising costs.

When the U.S. slapped tariffs on magnesium from China, its cost doubled. Brandt tried to compete with the cheap labor in China by opening a joint venture there, but it wasn't enough. Carmakers, spooked by the jump in prices, canceled orders and switched to aluminum.

The company slid millions of dollars into debt, and in September, signed its assets over to a trustee for sale or liquidation -- a process similar to bankruptcy.

Brandt hates to see his life's work shut down, viewing it as a sign of a more widespread problem.

"It will hurt this country," he warned, "because manufacturing is diminishing here."

'I'm a lifer'

A plant like Lunt depends on people with a knack for trouble-shooting. When Helmut Brandt had a problem no one else could fix, he turned to George Calder.

Calder started working at Lunt in high school in 1976. The Brandts sent him to trade schools to learn electrical, structural and plumbing skills.

Eventually, Calder knew enough to design and oversee construction of the Hampshire plant. He was loyal to the company, and the Brandts were loyal to him.

"I'm a lifer," he said. "I was going to work my whole life here, that's the way I felt. Well, it got cut a little bit short."

Upon learning he would be losing his job, Calder and his wife had to cancel plans for vacation, cut way back on Christmas spending and stopped contributing to their daughter's college costs.

Now, he plans to go into business for himself from his home in Lakewood, doing electrical work, carpentry, snowplowing, lawn mowing -- whatever it takes.

Calder doesn't want to stay in his field, fearing it's too risky.

"That's one reason I'm going on my own," he said. "It seems like our country is going to a service-based economy. Manufacturing is really slipping and that's a shame. I enjoyed making things (but) honestly, it scares me to stay in manufacturing."

Calder traveled to China to help Lunt build its plant there, and was struck by that country's low wages and air pollution. From his hotel, he couldn't see a block down the street, and he had to clean his glasses four times a day.

For truly fair trade, he believes China should be held to similar standards of worker safety, pollution control and compensation as in the U.S.

Now that he's losing his job, he realizes, "You never know how vulnerable you really are."

Dwindling days

As Federal Reserve economist William Testa points out, while manufacturing jobs have declined in the U.S., productivity is up. Companies are turning out more, better and specialized products with fewer workers.

In the Chicago area, while manufacturing once made up 40 percent of the local economy, it's now down to about 10 percent. The suburbs have fared better at keeping jobs, thanks in part to proximity to O'Hare International Airport, but success varies greatly by industry.

At Lunt, managers as well as laborers were caught by surprise. Helmut's son Holger Brandt -- who started as a teenager sweeping floors at Lunt, got his MBA and worked elsewhere before returning to become president -- hadn't written his resume since 1989.

"My intention was to continue to run this company," he said. "We didn't expect to be in the situation we're in."

Because Lunt had been so successful, workers were shocked to hear it was closing. When they held a modest pizza party to say goodbye, they parted with hugs and tears.

By now, many have already found work elsewhere -- but at least one lifer won't leave until the last possible second.

Mendoza, Lunt's die-casting foreman, came to the United States illegally in 1981. With amnesty, and help from Brandt, he eventually got legal citizenship.

Mendoza worked his way up to the point where he made $26 an hour. That's good money without an education, he admits, and will be hard to duplicate with full benefits elsewhere.

He recently got a job offer, but out of loyalty to the company, he wouldn't leave before Lunt closed.

"When I got worried I was going to lose my job #8230; Helmut always told me 'Ruben, you and I are gonna go out the door holding hands.' That means, we've got to go out together, no matter what. So that's why I stay 'til the end."