Fired Factory Worker Calls Romney A Job Killer [View all]

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Dec. 28, 2011

Labor organizer Randy Johnson was among the hundreds of blue-collar workers who lost their jobs at an American Pad and Paper (Ampad) factory in Marion, Indiana after Romney's private equity firm acquired the company in 1992 . . .

"It was really one of the worst things I think I've had to deal with, because people … were at my desk crying, 'What do I do? I don't have a good college education… I just wanted to get to retirement,'" Johnson recalled in an interview with ABC News. "Families were devastated. In some cases, the husband and the wife both worked there. They lost all their income. It doesn't get much worse than that."

Bain Capital purchased Ampad in 1992, and Ampad purchased the factory where Johnson worked two years later. The new owners began cutting staff and wages at the plant, and raising the cost of health benefits. The unionized workers went on strike. Ultimately, the plant was shuttered and all the employees lost their jobs.

Johnson's powerful story from the dark days at Ampad became a political weapon that Democrats wielded against Romney in potent television ads. They aired during the closing days of Romney's bitter 1994 challenge to the then-incumbent Sen. Edward Kennedy. Johnson also traveled at his own expense to Massachusetts to participate in rallies against Romney's candidacy, in part with the hope that his efforts would pressure Bain Capital to preserve jobs at the struggling paper plant.

The one-time factory worker has long since moved out of Indiana and is now employed by the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh. He believes that with unemployment as the focus of the 2012 presidential race, Romney's tenure at the helm of Bain Capital will again become grist for his political adversaries. And Johnson says he is preparing to assist again. (Johnson was approached directly by ABC News, and did not speak at the urging of any of Romney's political rivals, Democratic or Republican.)


read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/romney-critic-resurfaces/story?id=15244767&singlePage=true

watch interview with Randy Johnson: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/video/romney-critic-resurfaces-15245071