Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406080095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER NOTE: above
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Sara Lee's news comes just nine months after Martinsville's DuPont Nylon plant laid off nearly 700 workers from $15-an-hour jobs, some of the highest paying jobs in the region.
Even Sara Lee's vice president of employee relations, who wasn't having the most pleasant day of his work life Tuesday, said he empathized with Martinsville City Manager Earl Reynolds.
"He has not had it easy, has he?" Sara Lee's Sonny Dykes said of Reynolds.
Sara Lee's worldwide consolidation of its operations bears marked similarity to what caused DuPont to announce last year its plan for layoffs and retrenchment. In DuPont's case, the world's nylon plants had too much capacity. With Sara Lee, it was too much fleecewear capacity - the ability to make more sweat shirts and T-shirts than its customers wanted.
The Chicago-based food and clothing maker said it will shut its central distribution center in Martinsville and cut the work force at its textile dyeing and finishing plant there.
The distribution center employs 325 people, but Sara Lee thinks it can move 125 to a similar warehouse in the Bowles Industrial Park and eliminate another 50-75 jobs through an early retirement offer. It estimates that 125 distribution center workers will lose their jobs.
At the textile plants, the job loss will be higher. Dykes said 225 people at the dyeing operation will be out of work. Employees of the plant had known since December their jobs were in jeopardy. People were working two weeks, taking two weeks off, working another week, taking two weeks off, Dykes said.
"The rumors were always rampant," he said. "We had taken 11 weeks out of our working schedule, and we could just not continue on this schedule. It wasn't fair to us. It wasn't fair to the workers."
The dyeing plant will cut production from four shifts to two, but the workers who keep their jobs will work full-time. The average wage for a dyeing job in a textile mill is $8.50 an hour, according to the Virginia Employment Commission.
Sara Lee announced the elimination of 8,000 of its 138,000-person worldwide work force, a 6 percent reduction. But City Manager Reynolds sees a bit of hope in Sara Lee's announcement.
"The good news is it could have been worse, given the worldwide system Sara Lee has," Reynolds said. "This is a very old facility in this community, and it could have been one of the communities on the hit list for closure."
Martinsville certainly didn't need a bigger blow. The city's 10.1 percent unemployment rate for April already is among the worst in the state: 128th out of 136 localities. Surrounding Henry County is not booming either: it's 6.9 percent unemployment rate ranks it 100th in Virginia.
The A.L. Philpott Manufacturing Center in Henry County was set up to help the region's businesses hang onto their share of global manufacturing jobs. The center's mission is to retrain laid off workers, and introduce new technology into its factories so they can remain competitive. The center is new and is just getting set up.
Max Wingett, chairman of the center and president of Patrick Henry Community College, said the manufacturing center might not be much help to laid-off Sara Lee workers, "because most of the companies [in the area] are downsizing."
by CNB