16 MAR 06: HANGING BY A THREAD
When you're called into a 5:00 p.m. meeting at work, it can mean many things. It could mean it's your last day on the job, and it's time to clean out the desk. Or it could mean the bosses want to have a "gentlemen's night" at a place on Victory Drive where the cars are parked well off the street.
For employees of the Swift Galey mill on Sixth Avenue, a Wednesday afternoon meeting was more the former than the latter. Managers announced they won't produce their own yarns anymore -- which may well leave this task to fiction writers and bloggers.
The transition to using another company's yarn means the Swift Galey mill at the northeast edge of downtown Columbus will "become vacant." But executives didn't come out and say it will close. So will Kia executives please make their cars at the West Point plant with denim seats?
A vacant plant means as many as 200 Swift Galey employees could lose their jobs. But they might want to look at it as a step up in life. They're making textiles at the mill now, and could be selling them at Kohl's come November.
The dreaded word "outsourcing" was part of the announcement from Swift Galey. But in a switch, this spring the company will start using yarn produced at a spinning mill in North Carolina. Perhaps children in Bangladesh make more money these days than I thought....
Swift Galey executives explained they're trying to cut costs, and it's cheaper to buy yarn from North Carolina than make their own in Columbus. If this seems illogical, consider what I ate for breakfast Wednesday. If I bought all the ingredients for "Yogurt Burst Cheerios" myself, it could get expensive.
While some of the Columbus Swift Galey employees are likely to be laid off, others may be offered jobs with Frontier Spinning in North Carolina. So it's like the game show the late Peter Tomarken hosted -- if you "Press Your Luck" for an extra spin, you might get a crushing whammy.
As you might imagine, many Swift Galey employees were distressed by Wednesday evening's news of possible layoffs. One even wondered why the plant hadn't informed Mayor Poydasheff about it. There's good reason why not - the mayor's running for reelection, and doesn't want to hear that.
It's tempting to blame the problem at Swift Galey and similar mills across the South on Bill O'Reilly. After all, he made the "No-Spin Zone" so popular in this country....
But perhaps it's good that the Swift Galey plant becoming vacant is only a few blocks down the street from the Columbus Chamber of Commerce office. It's all the better for converting the old mill into the Mike Gaymon Office Complex.
THE BIG BLOG QUESTION about the Columbus Mayor's race ended Wednesday night, but with no clear consensus. Only 29 percent of our voters say incumbent Bob Poydasheff is unbeatable. But the rest can't agree on the best challenger for him - so maybe we should choose the one with the best NCAA tournament bracket.
Our seven-day, ridiculously non-scientific online poll found 29 percent of voters consider Fraternal Order of Police President Randy Robertson the best challenger for Mayor Poydasheff. He carries a badge, he looks handsome on TV - and he'll find all that fat in city government the mayor simply can't see.
But 14 percent of the vote in our poll went to Columbus Councilor Glenn Davis. I heard his name pop up several weeks ago as a possible candidate for Mayor - but as Davis would tell you from his years in baseball, you can't advance far with a
simple pop-up.
The "other" line for a challenger to Mayor Poydasheff received 29 percent of the score - but we asked voters to leave a comment about who they want to see, and no one did. You don't think former judge Roxann Daniel is planning a sneaky comeback, do you?
Our question was bad news for School Board President Mary Sue Polleys and Columbus Councilor Nathan Suber. NO voters considered them the best challenger for Mayor Poydasheff. This especially stings for Polleys, since I think her husband still has a reserved parking space under the Government Center.
Now let's send some Instant Messages, before our batteries run low....
+ To Columbus gas stations: Aw, c'mon! Ten-cent price hikes two days in a row? You'd think Iran was parading nuclear weapons all over the country or something....
+ To William Howell of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition: Have you mailed that letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter yet? Did you call his Washington office first? The staff members tell me they usually take meeting requests by fax.
+ To Taylor County High School: It's nice to see you finally had a "Black History Month" program Wednesday - 15 days after the month ended. That Lifetime TV production on the prom which caused the delay was only a movie, you know....
+ To Phenix City Central baseball coach Ron Nelson: Congratulations on your 500th career win! It must be satisfying to know compared with that high school down U.S. 431, you've never faced rumors of recruiting players from Columbus.
+ To the driver of a minivan with the Georgia license plate "SCRATCH": That's a nice Lincoln you have - so do you really want me to do that to it?
BURKARD'S BEST BETS: Gas for $2.38 at Citgo, Fifth and Veterans Parkway.... Publix bread for 99 cents, IF there's any left....and my alma mater Kansas to beat Bradley in the basketball playoffs, after watching plenty of tape about big bad Bucknell....
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