ROANOKE TIMES Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270083 SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER NOTE: Above MEMO: ***CORRECTION*** Published correction ran on August 28, 1996. The name of Henry County Administrator Sid Clower was misspelled in a story Tuesday.
550 WORKERS in Martinsville face layoffs within the next two years.
DuPont will cut 550 high-paying factory jobs in the next two years as it prepares to close its Henry County nylon plant by mid-1998, company executives said Monday.
The outdated, 55-year-old plant is being driven out of business, or will be, by lower-priced foreign-made nylon, said company officials who forecasted the impact of free-trade policies that take effect in coming years.
The layoffs will begin next summer. When the gate is finally locked, a factory complex that once employed nearly 5,000 and spun 150 million pounds of women's hosiery nylon fiber a year will house 50 people making spinning-machine parts for the industry.
County and Martinsville officials grimaced over the news, even though they had long expected to someday lose the region's ninth-largest employer.
At the same time, they hope they now have seen the last of a string of layoffs over a number of years that Tom Harned, assistant Martinsville city manager, attributes to corporate consolidations, downsizing and reorganization at various companies.
"We're going through a period of readjustment and this should just about do it," Harned said.
DuPont, with headquarters in Wilmington, Del., is the second major employer in the community to announce its closing in the past seven months. Sara Lee Corp. fired 420 workers in closing a Martinsville garment plant in March.
While Sara Lee paid an average of $9 an hour, DuPont's average wage is $15 and it pays some of the region's most generous benefits.
"The loss of those jobs in the community is extremely negative," said Sidney Klauer, Henry County's chief administrator.
The closing appeared likely to displace an additional 200 contract employees in cleanup, security and support roles at the DuPont plant and to cost Henry County government as much as $2 million per year in lost taxes.
Klauer said he doubted the area's textile plants will have enough openings to hire those cast off by DuPont, especially at the workers' current wages.
"Our primary hope is to attract new investment and new jobs to this community," he said, but, "it'll be difficult to replace these jobs."
Harned said the region had made some headway, however, in luring new manufacturing jobs and processes.
Over the next 23 months, Harned predicted the DuPont workers who don't retire or move away will find comparable work opportunities in the area - but probably at lower pay.
"To find a comparable job, people will be forced out of our area, either toward Roanoke or toward Greensboro [N.C.]," said Billy Buchanan, president of the independent employee union.
Many will indeed need other jobs. With the average age of plant employees between 45 and 50, many of those laid off will be a few years too young to retire. The union sees its job in part to help workers find jobs and to negotiate with the company for the best possible pension plan.
DuPont's closing also has implications for six companies and two government agencies that rent space at DuPont's 500-acre complex.
DuPont said it is responding to policies that are accelerating global trade. As more foreign companies come to the United States and peddle their fiber, which is less expensive to make, DuPont must reduce its prices. To do that, it will cut manufacturing costs by shutting its smallest U.S. nylon plant - the one in Martinsville - and upgrading some or all of the others.
The Martinsville factory, built in 1941, is more expensive to operate because of its age and is too small to take on additional work, said its manager John Winske. In fact, it will be running full-tilt into next year. The company's larger plants - in South Carolina, Tennessee and Delaware - can produce more, however, without massive extra costs, making them better candidates for long-term operation.
"This isn't anything to do about performance. The people perform well. They work hard. They are loyal," Winske said. "But we're going to lose out. We're a small plant in a changing world and we're going to lose out."
- Staff Writer Megan Schnabel contributed to this report.
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