Dave Green describes the effect of General Motors idling its Lordstown, Ohio, factory largely in personal terms.

The site employed 14,000 workers in the late 1980s, recalled Green, who has served as the president of its union local, United Auto Workers 1112, since May 2018. By the present decade, when it was assembling the Chevrolet Cruze, its workforce had shrunk to 4,500. In the past two years, those employees have disappeared too, as GM slowed the plant’s production, then decided in November to halt it altogether, part of a plan that would save $6 billion.