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A new darkness in Pitman

By Bob Holt In 1978, Columbia Records released Bruce Springsteen's album Darkness on the Edge of Town, which went on to sell more than three million copies. (Yes, they were still making albums then.) Now there will be darkness inside what, back then, was one of the busiest buildings in the South Jersey community of Pitman, where Sony shut down its manufacturing plant last week.

By Bob Holt

In 1978, Columbia Records released Bruce Springsteen's album Darkness on the Edge of Town, which went on to sell more than three million copies. (Yes, they were still making albums then.) Now there will be darkness inside what, back then, was one of the busiest buildings in the South Jersey community of Pitman, where Sony shut down its manufacturing plant last week.

I started with the plant when it was still Columbia, back in 1977. That Springsteen album was one of the first big sellers I saw, and it may have ushered in the plant's peak.

Bruce, Billy Joel, and even Barbra Streisand kept us busy for a long time. Michael Jackson probably paid off a quarter of my mortgage through overtime pay for Thriller and Bad.

Things slowed down badly for the plant in the mid-2000s. It was hurt by the advent of the iPod and dwindling DVD sales, and it stopped making Blu-ray discs.

When the layoffs began, the word from human resources was that I wouldn't be able to keep my job unless two veteran workers retired. One of them happened to bear a striking resemblance to the king of rock-and-roll, so to stay on the payroll, I needed Elvis to leave the building.

The first thing eliminated was our sick days, and raises became contingent on a series of evaluations. Next to go was the paid lunch break, which was hard for people working 12-hour shifts.

The plant occasionally resembled a high school when business was slow. During one midnight shift, an employee occupied himself by drawing a coworker's portrait on toilet paper. We did anything we could to keep ourselves going overnight.

Naturally, many of the older people who had been with the company a long time tried to hang on, holding out for better times. The alternative would be adjusting to a much lower starting wage with a new company - assuming you could get a job once you were over 50 and reentering the market.

Those with families didn't expect them to adjust easily. One of my best friends from the plant has four children, three of whom are autistic. Life wasn't easy for him even when he knew where his next paycheck was coming from.

As layoffs mounted, the company's insistence that employees were their No. 1 asset began to ring hollow. I finally decided to take a buyout in 2008.

Springsteen is over 60 now. The plant lasted longer than it had any right to by constantly reinventing itself. Records became CDs became DVDs became PlayStation games.

Some people are saying the music died in Pitman last week. But a lot of songs were remade and remixed over the 51-year life of the plant, and - brutal economy or not - people can be remade, too.

I hope the former Sony employees soon find the extended-play version of their careers, now that they can't be found in the darkness on the edge of town.