By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A06

KINGSTON, Pa. -- The other day, during what would have been first shift at the plant, Rose Ziminsky invited two of her former co-workers over for lunch. Then on the spur of the moment, she called four more. They all came right over.

Lunch took up half the afternoon -- more time than the old friends had spent at lunch on a weekday in years. They could have sat at Ziminsky's table for days, rehashing the loss of their jobs at the Techneglas factory and railing at the politicians for not talking enough about how they plan to fix the economy. But they felt uneasy about not having to watch a clock.

"I don't know what to do with myself," said Paul Beretsky, 54, a widower who lives near Ziminsky in this Wilkes-Barre suburb of white clapboard houses and green back yards. "I've been going to work at the plant for over 35 years."

Techneglas Inc., which made glass for television sets, shut down in August and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. With that announcement, nearly 700 people here who had devoted decades to a factory that consumed their holidays and weekends and babies' growing years were knocked off their footing in the nation's middle class. They made good wages -- as much as $21 an hour -- that are not easy to replace, and the fate of their pensions and health care coverage is in doubt.