Vanishing Jobs On Vashon Stir Talk Of Global Issues -- Ski Firm's Layoffs Send Shivers Around Island

VASHON ISLAND - With its funky characters and bucolic surroundings, this island seems a corner of the world still untouched by the spreading fingers of globalization.

Yet globalization was here yesterday, in Mary Martha's sandwich shop, where locals fretted over the K2 ski company's decision to lay off half the workers in its production plant here and shift many of their jobs to China.

The move, which locals say will cut about 200 jobs and send shivers through the island's economy, is expected to save the company $4 million next year.

Dancing and "channeling energy" while she served a steady stream of customers in Mary Martha's yesterday, Suzanne Myers, 26, a self-described artist/poet/linguist/singer/songwriter, told one customer the change reflected a typically big-business mentality.

"They'll make more money and that's all they care about," she said as the conversations of chatty Vashon residents wafted around her.

The store's owner, Kay Hermanns, 42, said the loss of local jobs is bad news for her shop, which relies on traffic from K2 workers.

"It's going to hurt us because we're just a small deli," she said. "K2 is our biggest client."

Hermanns said most people in this tight-knit community are upset at the shift of jobs to China.

"K2's been here forever," she said. "It's kind of put Vashon on the map."

Myers, a free-spirited world traveler who just recently moved to the island, generally does not concern herself with economics.

"I dance with the dollar bills as I float them over to the cash register," she said.

But the K2 layoffs have caused her to notice an ominous "synchronicity" between the job cuts and the upcoming World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, she said.

Myers also is thinking about the way K2's move will affect Vashon's sense of self.

Vashon is a place, she said, "where culture is still valued, where art is still valued."

"It is the soil of these great places that sews great minds," she said, paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau as she rung up a gooey `Ecstasy Bar.'

Myers feels that promoters of globalization like the K2 company "are not coming from the same place we are," she said.

"They have their position. They have their piece of the cake. And they're leaving nothing for the rest of us."

Debbie Myre, 44, is a K2 worker "on the bubble" of the layoffs, meaning she will be let go unless enough people whose jobs are secure decide to leave voluntarily.

She works on the plant's production floor, sanding ski bottoms.

"What they told us is that they are forced to make a reduction in force due to undercutting from the foreign market," she said.

On Thursday, when the layoffs were announced, she said she felt hysterical.

"Today I'm a little bit more realistic," she said yesterday.

If she is laid off, she said, "I'll probably just do the unemployment thing for a few months and figure out what to do next."

Myre finds the situation particularly jarring because she moved to Vashon Island to be near her place of work.

"I structured my life around K2," she said.

Across the street from the modest, one-story plant, Ki Choy owns an Exxon station frequented by K2 workers.

Much of the talk around the station's till yesterday seemed to concern the layoffs, which Choy expects will cost him 20 percent of his business and cost the local economy about $5 million to $8 million.

"They lay off, and my business will go down," he said. "They come by every morning, every evening, every afternoon."

King County Councilman Greg Nickels, whose district includes Vashon Island, said he was disappointed by the K2 decision.

"It was a homegrown business and, I thought, a very good fit for our rural community on Vashon," he said.

Loss of American blue-collar jobs to cheap foreign labor markets is "something we've been facing for the better part of the last generation," Nickels said.

"We have to work very hard to keep these jobs here and to keep our region competitive," he said.

Wilson Abbott, 51, a computer programmer at K2, took a fatalistic attitude towards the layoffs.

"I figured it was going to happen sooner or later," said Abbott, whose job is not in danger. "Manufacturing in the U.S. is having a hard time competing with labor costs in other places."

Abbott also noted that many of the people who work in the plant commute to Vashon Island, so the affect of the layoffs will not be concentrated all in one place.

Back at Mary Martha's, a poster advertising protests against the upcoming World Trade Organization conference in Seattle had been modified by a vandal so that it now sends an anti-K2 message.

Next to all of the evils the WTO is accused of promoting, the vandal wrote "K2," so that the sign now reads "low wages - K2, sweatshops - K2, rich getting richer - K2, increasing poverty - K2." The only evil the vandal failed to associate with K2 was war.

"I feel sorry for the people that are being laid off," said one K2 worker who asked not be identified. "Just before the holidays and all."

"It's really sad," said another. "I'll lose a lot of friends."

Eli Sanders' phone message number is 206-748-5815. His e-mail address is esanders@seattletimes.com