Jobs lost to Mexico raise ire Shutdown upsets Osram workers

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BANGOR – In the expansive Osram Sylvania plant alongside Interstate 95, most of the 66 remaining employees already feel abandoned even though the facility won’t be boarded up for another six months.

On Friday afternoon, after their shifts ended, seven of the workers stood outside the building under the shadow of a for-sale sign to voice their disgust about the way they feel Osram’s corporate office has handled its October 2002 decision to ship the local jobs and equipment to Mexico.

They also expressed anger over how they have been ignored by politicians who may need their support in an election some day.

A March 2005 date is tentatively set for the completion of the move to a huge manufacturing plant in Monterrey, Mexico, and the shutdown of nearly 40 years of producing light-bulb parts in Bangor.

The Mexico facility, according to Gordon Gallant, a 33-year employee from Newburgh, is so big “it makes this plant look like a baby.”

What’s occurring at Osram has a name and has been taking place at hundreds of manufacturing facilities nationwide. It’s called outsourcing or the corporate decision to transfer jobs and equipment to another country that results in layoffs in the United States.

Companies defend the action, calling it a common business practice that allows them to compete to keep prices and costs low in a fierce global economy.

Just because the manufacturing-shift phenomena has a nickname it doesn’t soften the blow in Bangor.

“I’m not so lucky,” said Robert Johnson, a 33-year employee from Hampden. “Thirty-three years. I have to wait three years to get retirement. And I have two daughters in college.”

Thinking about his daughters’ futures overtook Johnson with emotion and he walked away from his co-workers and headed home.

The seven employees, all but one with more than 30 years at the company, said what also has affected them deeply is that they have had to train the Mexican workers who will be producing the light-bulb lead wires now being manufactured in Bangor. The Mexican trainees also have come to Bangor for instruction.

Other than a language barrier, the Mexican workers are pleasant people just trying to do their jobs, the workers said.

All the Bangor workers have had to pitch in on the instruction, but only six have traveled to Mexico. Lisa Sawyer, a six-year employee from Newport, is one of them. She will travel to Monterrey on Oct. 18 to educate the Mexican workers on Osram’s customer service policies.

Sawyer said she’s been told that the training work is required of her job as a supervisor in Bangor. She will not receive any additional pay, but “I’ll get a plane ticket.”

Her co-workers said they understand why Sawyer is making the trip and do not feel any anger toward her.

“She’s in management,” responded Linda Cameron-Davis, a 35-year employee from Newburgh. “It’s her job. She has no choice.”

Larry Niles, a 32-year employee from Old Town, said Osram workers who assist in the manufacturing shift are guaranteed job protection through the March closure. The Bangor workers have a phrase for that employment security.

“They’ve got a halo around their heads,” Niles said. “They can’t be laid off until they are done training.”

On Friday, dozens of Osram workers signed a letter addressed to the company’s corporate communications manager, Stephanie Anderson, in which they criticize her for a statement she made in Friday’s Bangor Daily News. In that remark, Anderson said she had not heard “any individual comments or sentiments” of dissatisfaction from workers about the loss of their jobs to Mexico.

“Not only are we unhappy, we are anxious and stressed thinking about how we will support our families when our jobs here end,” the workers wrote. “We agonize over whether we will be able to find a comparable job or any job at all, the length of time it might take to find another job and whether or not the new jobs will provide affordable healthcare benefits or any healthcare benefits at all.”

The company responded that it is aware of the workers’ hardships, and the workers had read the statement before they met Friday afternoon with the Bangor Daily News.

“We know that this plant closing is disruptive and painful for our employees,” Anderson wrote in a Friday statement. “Despite the challenges the plant has faced, Osram Sylvania employees have consistently shown professionalism and cooperation. The company extends its gratitude for the contribution of our employees during this time of transition. We are providing transition benefits as well as other assistance.”

Next month, many of the workers will receive a one-time performance bonus of $11,000 before taxes for working every month since October 2002 without taking a single sick day and for meeting production quotas.

At one time in its Bangor history, Osram Sylvania, which also operated under the name GTE Sylvania, had employed more than 300 people. When the closure was publicized two years ago, 105 people were working at the plant, many of them hourly employees making up to $35,000 a year before taxes.

Upon their employment, most of the workers had signed a contract that stated that if they made the 30-year employment mark, they only would have to pay 10 percent of their health-insurance premiums for life.

“When they announced the closing, they took that away from us,” Gallant said.

Now some of them face health insurance premiums of $500 or more a month.

Besides their displeasure with the corporation, the workers are taking offense at the absence of any forms of compassion about their upcoming job losses from local and state politicians and the community over the last two years, something paper mill workers have received.

“I sympathize with Great Northern,” Niles said. “I sympathize with the people across the river. They’re in the same boat we are in. But they’re getting a lot more profile. We’ve gotten no dinners. There’s no banners here to tell us where we can get help.”

In addition to being worried about themselves and their families, the workers are concerned about the direction the country’s economy is heading. Outsourcing, they said, will destroy America’s economy.

“It’s too bad were losing manufacturing jobs in the state and across the country,” Niles said. “If you’re in manufacturing, you better start looking for a job because you’re next.”