A filmmaker from New York is in Sioux City this week, doing research for his follow up to a documentary made in the late 1970’s.
Jay Shapiro’s film will look at the aftermath of Zenith’s decision in 1977 to close their electronics manufacturing plant in Sioux City. “I think I got into it really asking questions about automation and automating jobs away and sort of globalization, these really big words and these big ideas that you can sort of get lost in the theory of them,” Shapiro said. “…I stumbled on George’s film just on YouTube and found it to be such an incredible document.”
George Lindblade’s documentary was titled “We Didn’t Want It to Happen This Way.” It told the story the 15-hundred Zenith jobs in Sioux City that were shifted to facilities in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mexico. Now, 42 years later, Shapiro is hoping to talk to people who worked at Zenith in Sioux City or who had family members impacted by the closing.
(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)