Bangor workers training replacements in Mexico

BANGOR – Ever since Osram Sylvania announced two years ago that it would be moving its Bangor-based operations to Mexico, the light bulb manufacturer has been preparing for its departure by asking some of its employees to train the people who will take their jobs south of the United States border.

At least six of the now 66 Bangor workers have traveled to Mexico to show employees how to operate the equipment that also is being shipped south from Bangor, according to Stephanie Anderson, manager of corporate communications for Osram Sylvania.

The workers who are training their Mexican counterparts no longer will be employed by Osram when the company closes its doors in Bangor, which is tentatively set for March 2005, she said.

“It goes without saying that those involved in the transfer of equipment or in the transfer of jobs will no longer be employed with Osram Sylvania after the March 2005 closure,” Anderson said Thursday.

Outsourcing – the transfer of jobs and equipment to another country that results in layoffs in the United States – has become a hot issue in the presidential election.

Republican President Bush is being criticized by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry for exporting jobs to other countries at the expense of the American manufacturing industry.

In Maine, more than 18,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last three years, a number that is considered to be the highest per capita of any state.

But Anderson said outsourcing is a common business practice in a global economy where competition to keep prices and costs low is intense.

“That is a reality for Osram Sylvania,” she said. “This does represent part of a larger dynamic that we’re seeing.”

Osram Sylvania is the North American operation of Osram GmbH of Germany, the second-largest lighting manufacturer in the world and part of Siemens, a diversified international electrical and electronics company. Its U.S. headquarters is in Massachusetts.

In Bangor, the company once produced more than 500 types of lead wires for fluorescent, incandescent and other types of light bulbs that are used primarily in businesses.

Osram Sylvania’s departure from Maine started with a June 2002 announcement that it would lay off one-third of its 150-person work force in Waldoboro within two years as the company moved some of its production to the Czech Republic.

Osram Sylvania has been in Waldoboro for more than 50 years, manufacturing lighting components such as filaments for light bulbs. Besides the loss of jobs, the company also moved some of its equipment from Waldoboro to the Czech Republic.

Less than four months after the Waldoboro announcement, Osram Sylvania told its then 97-member Bangor work force that the operation near Bangor Mall would be shut down completely within two years or October 2004.

Anderson said Thursday that because of “complications,” the closing was delayed six months to March 2005.

According to Ginny Carroll, a member of the state Department of Labor’s Rapid Response team, Osram Sylvania recently employed about 40 temporary workers in Bangor who were hired through an employment agency in Waldoboro. Those positions ended this summer.

The temporary workers are collecting federal unemployment and job retraining benefits because they lost their jobs due to a shift in production to another country.

The benefits are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was ratified in the mid-1990s and opened the borders of the United States, Mexico and Canada to a greater exchange of goods and services.

Osram’s current 66-person staff in Bangor will be eligible for the same benefits once they are laid off and will receive company-provided severance packages, Anderson said.

“NAFTA makes employees eligible for a wide set of benefits that they would not be eligible to receive if they [the jobs] were transferred to Eastern Europe, Asia or other parts of the world,” Anderson said.

The Bangor workers are not the only ones training Osram Sylvania’s work force in Mexico.

The Bangor operations are being shifted to a manufacturing facility called Mapresa in Monterrey, Mexico, which was operational when Osram Sylvania purchased it a few years ago, Anderson said. So are some of the operations from Osram Sylvania’s plant in Lake Zurich, Ill.

The Monterrey employees who were working at the facility when Osram Sylvania purchased it also are training the new workers, Anderson said.

Osram Sylvania has tried to be open with its employees about the pending closure, Anderson said, and the communication has not been an attempt “to postpone the inevitable.”

Anderson said it is her belief that there aren’t any Bangor workers upset that their jobs are going to Mexico.

“I’m not aware of any individual comments or sentiments expressed in the company or at the corporate level,” Anderson said. “The openness in the communications in this process has been appreciated.”