Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 14, 1994 TAG: 9409200013
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But more and more of them are being laid off. Tuesday, the unwelcome trend continued as Sara Lee Knit Products announced its third round of job cuts in the past two months. The company said it will close its textile operations in Martinsville in November, affecting 240 workers.
The company also will close a sewing plant in Gretna, idling 400 more workers.
The Martinsville plant makes underwear and activewear for men, women and children.
In June, Chicago-based Sara Lee Corp. started a world-wide downsizing and consolidated its fleece wear distribution center in Martinsville. The consolidation that will take effect next year involves 325 employees. The company does not know how many of those workers will lose their jobs.
In August, the company reduced the number of shifts at its Henry County Cloverleaf knitting plant from four to two, laying off 290. The Cloverleaf plant is now being closed.
And although Sara Lee still employs about 1,200 workers in Southside Virginia, the downsizing hit the Martinsville area the hardest of any of the company's fleece wear centers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, company spokeswoman Nancy Young said.
Sara Lee's restructuring included an estimated 8,000 layoffs of its 138,000 global work force. Close to 1,000 of those have occurred in Martinsville.
The local downsizing was magnified by 700 layoffs at Martinsville's DuPont nylon plant months earlier, and the most recent layoffs have sent up red flags in the community.
Lawler and economic development representatives say Henry County must pull together to diversify its economy while trying to find a niche for a manufacturing work force competing in a global economy.
Martinsville's textile industry is built around Fortune 500 companies such as Sara Lee and DuPont. The companies provide above-average wages - $8 an hour on average - and have established product lines, but their competition has expanded internationally.
That's why a company like Sara Lee would close its textile operation in Martinsville, abandoning a dyeing and finishing plant it just renovated, says Lawler. Global competition makes for quick and unexpected changes.
"We cannot control what a company's Chicago headquarters is doing," he said.Lawler and Frank Novakowski, executive director of the Patrick Henry Development Council, said they hope Sara Lee's modernized finishing facility - as well as the Cloverleaf knitting plant - will be sold to prospective new industries.
Martinsville and Henry County have had two of the highest unemployment rates in the state in recent months. In an effort to help the displaced workers, executives at Sara Lee are talking with several other Martinsville textile plants that are expanding, and the company has agreed to donate its Adele Street sewing plant in Martinsville, a 94,000-square-foot former Pannill Knitting plant, to the Partnership for Progress - a privately created economic development foundation.
Frank Novakowski, a director for the partnership, said the plant - built at the turn of the century and inadequate for modern industry - will house a business incubator program, sheltering small entrepreneurial outfits.
"What we want to do is give some small businesses a chance to grow and help us diversify," he said.
Tom Harned, Martinsville's community development coordinator, agreed.
"Our number one priority right now is providing employment to the workers in the Martinsville and Henry County area," he said.
SARA LEE SAID:
The Cloverleaf knitting plant in Henry County and a Martinsville dyeing and finishing facility, together employing 240, will close in November.
A Gretna sewing plant in Pittsylvania County employing 400 will close this month.
Jobs for 75 employees will be available at Sara Lee plants in Eden, N.C., and future jobs will be at Greenwood, S.C.
The company will donate its Adele Street plant in Martinsville to The Partnership for Progress, a nonprofit organization, to use as a business incubator.
by CNB