Free Republic

KANNAPOLIS - Nearly seven months after textile giant Pillowtex shut down, wiping out 4,800 jobs in the largest mass layoff in North Carolina history, the hunt for work is growing more pressing. Job hunters are growing nervous. For most, benefits will expire this summer. "When they first came in, they were probably still in shock," said Linda Burton, an Employment Security Commission officer who works in a small office just a few hundred yards from the shuttered Pillowtex mill. "Now it’s really coming home that time is ticking away, and at some point they’re not going to have any money....

New York - Wal-Mart does not have a grand plan to take over the world, Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott told his retail competitors Sunday at the start of the National Retail Federation's 94th annual convention. "We just want to keep growing," Scott said in a talk that acknowledged his company's power, but tempered the message with big doses of self-effacing humor. "We don't think we're going to own the world. If you don't believe it, just go to a Best Buy store in the United States on the Friday after Thanksgiving." It was the first visit by a...

KANNAPOLIS, N.C. - The old mill town is searching for silver linings and grasping at threads. When a textile factory in Kannapolis closed this summer, wiping out 1,571 jobs here in a single day, the laid-off workers felt a sense of panic. City Manager Michael Mahaney, who in July had likened his town's jobless situation to an emergency room triage, predicted good things for Kannapolis a few months later. "People are maybe just going to have to start commuting" to Charlotte, he said. Mahaney was describing the fate of textile towns all over the country. Despite a surge in manufacturing...

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Pillowtex Corp. on Tuesday won bankruptcy court approval of the $128 million sale of its assets to a group of liquidators. Judge Peter J. Walsh at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington indicated he would approve the sale of Pillowtex's brands, plants and equipment to GGST LLC, a consortium that emerged as the winner of a 10-hour auction held in New York on Thursday. GGST has said that it plans to sell Pillowtex's assets rather than operate them, leaving in question whether any of its 16 sheet and towel factories in North America will reopen and whether...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Special grants assist with job placement, training, health care The demise of the Pillowtex Corp. and other manufacturers has brought heartache to thousands of workers and their families, who now find themselves looking to tomorrow with anxiety and uncertainty. It is a difficult time for those who earned their livelihoods at these facilities in North Carolina, and in other states as well. As Secretary of Labor, I want all of these workers to know: This administration is deeply committed to helping you get the resources you need to transition to new...

Pillowtex Corp. declared bankruptcy July 30, displacing 4,800 people in the state's largest-ever layoff. The company's collapse devastated employees, who worried they wouldn't be able to stay afloat financially. In the week after Pillowtex's closing -- when the surveys were filled out -- 42.5 percent of workers were behind in their rent or mortgage payments. Already, 10.6 percent had been evicted.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.At his Aug. 4 appearance in Kannapolis, Gov. Mike Easley showed up 20 minutes late, then talked for 30 minutes about how devoted he was to helping the newly unemployed Pillowtex workers. He praised two Charlotte A-list executives, Mac Everett of Wachovia Corp. and Jim Hance of Bank of America Corp., for trying, unsuccessfully, to find a buyer for Pillowtex while protecting their banks' interests. Then Easley dashed off without taking a question from workers or journalists. Left in his wake were 6,500 former Pillowtex employees suddenly surrounded by glad-handing pols who,...