ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 10, 1997 TAG: 9701100067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
About 450 people will lose their jobs when AMP Inc. closes its Roanoke plant on Hollins Road over the next few months. Layoffs will begin immediately.
The plant will be phased out, closing as early as March but perhaps as late as mid-year, Thea Hocker, manager of media relations at company headquarters in Harrisburg, Pa., said Thursday.
The jobs that will be lost at AMP in Roanoke cover all classifications and wage scales. She said she could not give a figure, but AMP paid "competitive" wages in the Roanoke market.
William Mezger, senior economist with the Virginia Employment Commission in Richmond, said the average weekly wage in manufacturing in Roanoke in November was $554.60. The average manufacturing hourly wage was $13.66 in November, the last month for which figures were available.
Hocker said some jobs are available at AMP plants in Pennsylvania and Florida for skilled workers in Roanoke who want to transfer. Tool and die workers are among those whose skills are needed, she said.
Other workers will be eligible for a severance package with benefits depending on wages and seniority, according to Hocker.
She said the closing, announced Wednesday, was caused by ``a real downturn in demand'' for amplimite, a connection device used by personal computer manufacturers, which was made at the Roanoke facility.
The company also will close plants in New York state, California, Pennsylvania and some overseas locations, costing 1,000 jobs worldwide. AMP employs nearly 45,000 workers worldwide.
Hocker said the closings are "a reflection of the business environment" as the company writes off its unprofitable lines.
In 1995, the company reported net profits of $427 million on sales of $5.2 billion, an increase from year-earlier profits of $374 million on sales of $4.4 billion.
The closing of the AMP plant follows by only a few weeks the loss of about 380 jobs at Hanover Direct, a telemarketing and catalog fulfillment company.
The unemployment rate in November was 2.6 percent, but Mezger said that should rise to about 3 percent in January because of seasonal changes. He said he would guess that the AMP and Hanover Direct layoffs would add another one-tenth or two-tenths of a percentage point to that rate when the January figures are calculated.
Nevertheless, Marjorie Skidmore, manager of the VEC's Roanoke office, said there should be plenty of need for AMP employees, who are skilled at precision work.
"The fact that [the layoffs] are coming when they are is good, as far as us being able to help them," she said. Companies including R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., which expects to employ 185 at its book factory by the end of the year, soon will begin recruiting new workers, she said. Existing companies may be looking for replacement workers as spring nears, as well, she said.
But it probably will be difficult for former AMP employees, many of whom had accumulated years of seniority, to find jobs that pay as much as they have been making, Skidmore said.
"There is a demand for the kinds of skills these people have," she said. "But we hate to lose any jobs."
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