A few months ago, this was a quaint and genteel boomtown.
Houses were springing up on every available lot. Elementary classrooms were jammed. People from all over the country were arriving to work at Corning Inc, which, unlike most of New York state's old industrial companies, seemed to have transformed itself into a high-tech corporation with a bright future.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
But last week, boom abruptly turned to bust in Corning. The company announced that one of its new businesses had gone sour, forcing it to take a US$5.1 billion -- that's billion with a B -- charge.
It has stopped paying dividends to shareholders for the first time since it went public in 1945. It has brought back a member of the Houghton family, the company's founders, to lend a hand through the tough times.
And worst of all, for the people who live in this town of 11,000, Corning has laid off some 1,000 people here, about an eighth of its local work force.
One of those people laid off is Ellen Baker, a 33-year-old former teacher. Baker returned to her hometown a year and a half ago and found a job at Corning assembling gadgets that amplify the light pulses that zoom along fiber optic lines. Manufacturing equipment to keep fiber optic lines blazing, known as photonics, is the business that suddenly went south.
"All the way through December there was so much work and overtime -- how can it be the exact opposite now?" she asked. "It's hard to understand."
No one is suggesting that Corning's change of fortune is fatal; unlike many other companies that have made big bets on the wired world of telecommunications, it has plenty of money and other lines of business.
But the sudden setback has come as a shock to company executives and to investors (Corning shares plunged to US$14.54 Friday from more than US$113 last September.)
Sharp swings in business have become common at high-speed, high-tech companies and the places they call home, like Silicon Valley in California. But this is the Chemung River Valley, an old-fashioned community of at most 35,000 people 307km northwest of Manhattan.
This is where, in 1868, the first Amory Houghton (pronounced HOE-ton) moved his little glass company. Coal was plentiful, transportation by water was easy, and the city fathers made him a good offer.
This is where, a decade later, what had become Corning Glass Works made the first light bulbs for Thomas Edison. This is where Pyrex custard cups were born, where Steuben crystal decanters were blown, where television tubes were shaped and where Corelle plates were proven to be practically unbreakable. This is where scientists were involved in developing products like silicones and fiberglass. This is where what is today Corning Inc became one of the country's leading corporations.
For about a century, most of the many things Corning Inc made were made here. Its factories lined the Chemung River, and small bars lined Market Street to serve thousands of thirsty glass workers. They lived, for the most part, in the low-lying north side of town; executives and scientists settled along a hill to the south of town.
In 1972 Hurricane Agnes sent floodwaters surging through the valley, knocking out factories and sweeping away homes. Corning Inc basically took over the town until it could be rebuilt, and then began a loving restoration of Market Street.
So while the Main Streets of many small upstate cities are gap-toothed and crumbling, Corning's main drag is a five-block stretch of trim brick buildings and wooden benches, American flags and flower pots.
After the flood, the fourth Amory Houghton to lead the company promised the community that Corning Inc would stay put (unlike, say, Xerox, which in the 1970s moved its executives from Rochester, New York, to Stamford, Connecticut).
Today, Corning executives like to say that theirs is the biggest global corporation in the smallest town in the world.
But at the same time, the company was expanding, across the US and around the world. Less manufacturing was done in Corning itself. Membership in the American Flint Glass Workers Union began to dwindle, from a high of 7,000, to 3,200 in the 1980s and 1,500 in the early 1990s. (Today it stands at 3,700 because of the photonics plant.) And the company began jettisoning its old businesses: lighting in 1989, medical testing in 1996, housewares in 1998.
What it turned to was high-tech telecommunications, specifically fiber optics, the glass threads that are replacing copper telephone wires.
Demand for optical fiber and the equipment that went with it seemed to be limitless; Corning's telecommunications sales surged 38 percent in 1999, to US$3 billion, and 73 percent last year, to US$5.1 billion, or 70 percent of the company's total revenues.
The company snapped up other manufacturers, and spent lavishly on research and development. Scientists were lured to Corning from Boston and Austin, from Silicon Valley, of course, and from overseas.
The company's work force in the area jumped to 8,200. About 1,700 of them worked at the new photonics plant just outside of town, according to the union.
And then came the brick wall. The telecommunications bubble burst, the national economic slowdown took root and Corning was one of the high-tech companies, like Lucent and Nortel, to suffer.
Sales of photonics, which the company had predicted early this year would would grow an additional 75 percent, will be down 35 percent compared with last year, said John Loose, the company's chief executive.
The company realizes that few other jobs are available in and around Corning, and it has taken steps to limit the damage here, Loose said. Many of the jobs cut by the company this year were in metropolitan areas where there are more employment opportunities.
But that's not a lot of comfort to the workers here who have lost their jobs.
"There's been a lot of tears, a lot of blowing off steam, some screaming and hollering," said Stephen Mandell Sr, president of Local 1000 of the glass workers' union. Even those who still work at Corning are upset, and some of them boycotted parties the company had at some plants Friday to celebrate its 150th anniversary.
Most people in this company town express confidence in Corning's management and its future. "Corning Inc has really picked a new path that I believe will take them through the 21st century," said Mayor Alan Lewis Sr, whose mother and brother both worked for the company for decades.
It is possible that some people who moved to Corning for jobs will leave to find work, but Mandell, the union president, thinks many will stick around in the hope of being called back.
That's what Ellen Baker, the furloughed photonics worker, plans to do. Both her father and her brother have been laid off by Corning in the past, "and with struggles both of them made it," she said. "But that doesn't make it any easier when it happens to you."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique