IBEW Local 1985 (North Canton OH) Threatened by Maytag Corporate Greed

Maytag may move production, jobs from North Canton

By EDD PRITCHARD, Copley Ohio Newspapers

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.)

IBEW Local 103 (Boston) Raises Electronic Picket Line Against Troubled Firm

Home > Business Today > Business News

IBEW to zap company with Web protest
By John Strahinich
Friday, April 1, 2005

As if Biogen Idec didn't have enough troubles, a local of the electrical-workers union promises to launch a new Web site called ``BiogenExposed.''
IBEW Local 103 spokesman Donald Sheehan said a Web site ``opposing the business practices and lack of community commitment to its neighbors by Biogen Idec has been a long time in the planning.''
But Biogen spokesman Jose Juves attributed the IBEW's motives to sour grapes, saying the union was shut out of an expansion of Biogen's Cambridge campus.
``Our philosophy is to engage business partners based on quality and value,'' Juves said, but added that that ``has resulted in 80-percent union involvement in our contracts.''

IBEW Local 1109 (Goshen, IN) Members Learn Johnson Control Moving to Mexico

As plant prepares to close, workers find ways to cope
by Steve Bibler Truth Staff, Thursday, March 31, 2005



GOSHEN -- When Deborah LeBold struggled with radiation treatments for a brain tumor, her friends and colleagues at Johnson Controls Inc. raised $3,000 to help her family meet extra expenses while she underwent treatment in an Indianapolis hospital.

Though the 50-year-old Goshen resident has worked there just six years, she calls her fellow workers "my family."

That's why Monday's anouncement that the company will close within a year, idling the last 167 workers at the factory that once employed 1,300, has been so hard on people like LeBold.

"I will miss these people," said LeBold, who once worked on the assembly line but since her illness has worked second shift as a custodian. She says she receives good pay and great benefits. She'll miss them, too.

A co-worker on second shift, Lorraine Fragale, echoed LeBold's sense of loss.

"We're pretty close over here. We care about each other," said Fragale, who has worked at the factory for 32 years, most recently as an assembler in the solder department.

After they learned Monday of the closing, one of the first things some of the workers talked about was keeping in touch after they no longer work together, she said.

"We decided we should get together once a year, go out, just to meet and talk," said Fragale.

Both Fragale, who is 57 and divorced, and LeBold, who is married, say they'll look for new jobs.

LeBold's main concern right now is getting health insurance to cover follow-up treatment for her tumor. She'll need an MRI once or twice a year for the rest of her life, she said.

"I believe God will open another door for me," LeBold said.

Fragale says she doesn't know what she will do.

"I'm too young to retire," she said. It doesn't have to be factory work, she said, "but that's all I know."

She said she might inquire at Goshen General Hospital, where she worked in central supply before she joined Johnson Controls (then known as Penn Controls) or maybe the new Martin's Super Market coming to Goshen.

Both women hope a generous severance package will help tide them over until their next job. The workers, all members of Local 1109 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, spent several hours Wednesday afternoon getting the details of that package.

Contact Steve Bibler at sbibler@etruth.com.
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