Paul Blackman ran the Smith Steel Workers Union for most of a twenty-year period starting in 1972. His tenure was the most tumultuous in company history -- a time of dramatic change for labor and management alike.

At A.O. Smith's Milwaukee Works, the last former employee to leave the factory was Rich Wendling.  He worked at A.O. Smith for 32 years, starting in 1969.  After the plant closed in 2006, Rich came back to work for its most recent owner, an investment group called Milwaukee Industrial Trade Center LLC (AKA "Midwest Rail").  The firm hired him as a security guard and fix-it man because he knew the plant inside and out.

Here's his story.

In Milwaukee, as in every Northern city, black migrants started with the dirty, low-paying, sweat-and-muscle factory jobs. They were the last hired and the first fired -- but as they worked up the ladder they eventually found union work that paid a living wage.

Sylvester Sims, who's now in his eighties, remembers his dad's job at International Harvester back before World War Two.

Many decades later, Fred Schnook was a production line worker at A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive.

Milwaukee's top-ten manufacturing employers from the boom times have cut employment drastically, or have simply disappeared. No city in America was pummeled so severely by recessions and globalization in recent decades.

African American workers in factory jobs were especially hard-hit by the downturn. Today, the official unemployment rate for black males in Milwaukee is 16.4%.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Prof. Marc Levine says the real number is well above 50%. He's been studying the situation since 1990. (Video courtesy Social Development Commission)