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80 jobs, 235 jobs ---try this:

VF to lay off 1,200 in El Paso

Vic Kolenc
El Paso Times Oct 18, 2002

El Paso's disappearing garment industry has been hit with another blow.

VF Jeanswear, maker of Lee and Wrangler jeans, will close two of its six El Paso plants in December and May and lay off about 1,200 workers, the company announced Thursday.

VF laid off just more than 1,000 El Paso workers late last year and early this year in a cost-cutting move. Most of the layoffs were from the two plants now being closed.

"I feel terrible," Anita Sanchez, who worked 19 years for VF, said Thursday afternoon as she left the VF plant at 9624 Plaza Circle in the Lower Valley. The plant, with about 750 employees, is scheduled to close in May. "I don't have any plans at this point. I may be able to go to school."

A plant at 12380 Pine Springs in far East El Paso that employs about 450 people is scheduled to close in December.

Weak jeans sales this year and expected slow sales next year led the jeans maker once again to cut its work force in the United States and shift more production to VF's lower-cost factories in Mexico, Honduras and Costa Rica, said Sam Tucker, vice president of human resources for VF Jeanswear. It's a subsidiary of VF Corp., which bills itself as the world's largest apparel company. Both companies are based in Greensboro, N.C.

"We have more (production) capacity than we need, and when that happens in today's (economic) climate, you have to look" at shifting production away from the highest-cost plants, Tucker said.

VF pays an average wage of $10.01 an hour in El Paso, Tucker said.

VF's employment in El Paso will drop to about 1,800 people after the layoffs, Tucker said. The company had employed just more than 5,000 people before its layoffs late last year. VF is also closing five plants in Oklahoma, Virginia and

Missouri and laying off about 1,900 people at those plants, Tucker said.

VF Jeanswear's plants-closing announcement came the same day that VF Corp. announced record third-quarter profits of $128.2 million -- an almost 25 percent increase from a year ago. The corporation posted a $231.1 million loss for the first nine months of the year. However, the loss was due to a change in accounting policy related to past acquisitions, VF Corp. spokeswoman Cindy Knoebel said. Without the change, VF would have posted a $296.1 million profit for the nine months, VF reported.

Tucker said the jeans division was "not a big contributor to what was a big quarter for VF Corporation." The company does not release sales figures for individual business lines but reported that the company's domestic jeans business posted "low single-digit sales declines" in the third quarter (July through September). Corporatewide sales were essentially flat in the third quarter at $1.4 billion and declined 5.3 percent to $3.7 billion in the first nine months of the year, VF reported.

After the VF layoffs, El Paso's garment industry employment will drop below 7,000 people, according to Texas Workforce Commission data at the end of last year combined with some major layoffs this year. The industry employed 21,781 people at the end of 1993, according to state data.

Levi Strauss & Co. last month closed its last El Paso plant, laying off 780 workers.

Tucker said VF will give laid-off workers severance pay of $110 for each year of employment -- an amount that brought criticism during VF's previous El Paso layoffs.

"The severance is totally insufficient," said Guillermo Glenn, an advocate for laid-off garment workers. He questioned why "the largest garment maker in the world cannot offer more of a just benefit package."

El Paso Mayor Ray Caballero Thursday issued a statement calling on VF to offer a generous severance package and job transition funds to laid-off workers.

Tucker said, "We (VF) tried to put together the best (severance) package we could offer."

Tom Fullerton, an economist at the University of Texas at El Paso, estimated that the VF layoffs would result in a $50 million income loss in El Paso over a 12-month period. He based that on the income loss of 1,200 VF workers with an average wage of $10.01 an hour, combined with a "ripple effect" of other jobs lost at VF suppliers and other businesses that sell products to the plants' workers.

FITZ! Then why the 'ell is the Government telling us our economy is so good? We hear all the time about closings and lay-offs. Now! How can that make for a good economy?!

"AUGUSTA — In a stunning announcement, Sanmina-SCI said Thursday it will close its plant here and lay off about 440 people at the end of September.

The closing brings economic uncertainty to employees and their families, significant tax implications for the city, and a serious blow to efforts to draw high-tech jobs to central Maine. "

Crowe Rope with 100 employees also went belly up.

VF announced plant closings in OK, Va and MO yesterday, also.