In the new documentary, “Papertown,” a film that immerses itself into the mountain community of Canton as it dealt with the closure of its 115-year-old paper mill in 2023, features a scene with Gail Mull — the town’s mayor pro tem and secretary of the local millworkers union — that sums it all up. 

“The mill has provided, and there is going to be life after the mill,” Mull said. “Billionaires come and go, we’re going to be here forever. We have to make something of it.  We have to have the backbone. We have to have the grit. We have got to stay here and make something of it — and we will.” 

To the Editor:

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. There has been a coordinated plan by people such as those in the Heritage Foundation to dumb down regular people in the USA since the Reagan era. Alvin Toffler even said in his book, “The Third Wave,” that industrial era schools were designed to teach students to be obedient, on time and do rote repetitive work. 

Prior to its appropriation by communist regimes, International Workers Day — May Day — was first commemorated in honor of Chicago workers killed while striking for an eight-hour workday.

Learn about the challenges and success of mining resources related to our transition to clean energy at the WNC Sierra Club.

Randy Francisco of the United Steelworkers Union will discuss ways that “environmentalists and labor can work together to ensure that workers and their communities are protected from harm from this mining.

Hardister seeks important labor post 

Waynesville’s USA Farm Labor is suing the federal government in hopes of changing a new rule it claims will cost the company hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of dollars per year. 

Amid a nationwide struggle to fill open positions in a multitude of sectors, higher education institutions in Western North Carolina say they’re not experiencing more vacancies than is typical as they navigate their most hiring-heavy season of the year. However, in some instances filling those vacancies is taking longer than in years past. 

Now carrying double the vacancies it had in the summer of 2019, Harrah’s Cherokee Casinos is feeling the effects of a labor shortage  that’s challenging businesses nationwide — but the situation has improved significantly in recent months.   

Nursing homes and assisted living facilities were among the hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, they are facing another problem, one whose roots stem from pre-COVID times — staffing shortages. 

While prominently displayed “now hiring” signs and sign-on bonuses attest to the difficulty many employers now face in staffing their operations, outdoor businesses have been largely exempt from the summer’s labor crisis — just as they were from the faltering consumer demand that rattled many industries this time last year.