Maytag may move production, jobs from North Canton
NORTH CANTON – Maytag Corp. has developed a “tentative business plan” that could eliminate 150 jobs at local Hoover Division plants.
Some in the area are wondering if the proposal – passed along Wednesday to officers of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1985 – is a sign that Maytag plans to leave the area when a union contract expires in 2008.
Workers outside the IBEW Local 1985 office Thursday said Maytag officials are trying to cut back the North Canton plant anyway they can. If the union doesn’t give in, the jobs will be gone. If the union grants concessions, Maytag will repeat the process until workers have nothing.
Workers said Hoover is being used as a scapegoat for Maytag’s poor-stock performance. Maytag shares closed Thursday at $13.97 per share, a gain of 6 cents during the day but far below the 52-week high of $32.21.
“It’s the demons of corporate greed,” Alton Carter Jr. said of Maytag’s proposal. “They ain’t bluffing. We’re supposed to have a 2008 contract. They keep dipping and dipping. They take and take.”
The proposal is to move the Eagle production line, which makes models in the company’s SteamVac line, to one of the factories in El Paso, Texas, or Juarez, Mexico.
Jim Repace, Local 1985 president, said the company wants concessions in a contract approved in 2003. That contract is in effect until June 2008.
The proposal seeks concessions in a number of areas, Repace said, although he declined to discuss specifics.
“What they’ve said in there is totally unacceptable,” Repace said.
Karen Lynn, a Maytag spokeswoman, said the tentative business plan is part of Maytag’s efforts to remain competitive in the floor-care market.
Repace and Lynn said the union and company are discussing the business plan, but neither commented on the discussions.
Lynn declined to say if Maytag has a timetable for instituting the business plan. “We’ll have these discussions and see where they take us,” she said.
Repace said he believes the union has “a couple of weeks” to talk with Maytag officials before action is taken.
“In the meantime, we hope something can be done,” he said.
Production of Hoover products has switched between local and southwestern factories for years. Last summer, Maytag moved production of subassemblies related to SteamVac to the Southwest. But the move didn’t cause layoffs, and Maytag said Hoover would begin making new products locally.
Terry Thompson said the union already gave the company concessions. Now Maytag is threatening to move jobs out of state.
“We’re going to fight,” Thompson said. “We’ve got to fight. We have no choice.”
If the jobs do leave, Repace said, the union is weighing an arbitration battle with Maytag on grounds that the company has bargained in bad faith.
Hoover still has about 1,300 employees at its local operations. Only two years ago, employment levels surpassed 3,000 workers. Last year, the company closed the Industrial Park Plant and laid off 500 office workers in a move that merged several Hoover operations with Maytag corporate offices in Newton, Iowa.
Repace said Maytag’s proposal leaves him and IBEW members concerned about the fate of local Hoover operations when the contract comes up for renewal in 2008.
Hoover has been a part of North Canton since the company started making and selling vacuum cleaners in 1908.
“If something happens then (2008),” Repace said, “it will come about 40 days before Hoover’s 100th anniversary.”
(Copley Ohio Newspapers writers Shane Hoover and Kelli Young contributed to this story.)
No comments:
Post a Comment