Circuit City layoffs protested Bangor demonstration expresses ‘solidarity’ with workers

BANGOR – Not one of the four Circuit City employees laid off in March as a result of the company’s controversial move to reduce wages was present among the protesters who gathered outside the store Friday afternoon, but the crowd chanted with enthusiasm nonetheless.

“We’re here in solidarity with the laid-off workers,” said Bruce Roy, president of the Maine Labor Council of the United Steelworkers Union. Roy, a 50-year-old resident of Jay, was in town for a three-day United Steelworkers Union conference and decided to join the crowd of 30 gathered on the lawn beside the store on Stillwater Avenue.

The protest was held in response to Circuit City’s March 28 announcement that it would lay off 3,400 of its highest-paid employees nationwide. Calling the layoffs “separations” in a telephone interview Friday afternoon, Circuit City spokesman Jim Babb said employees were laid off because their managers were paying them well above the market-based salary range for their positions.

“This was not a staff reduction. By now we have filled all of those spots with people who are compensated within the current market range,” Babb said. “The affected associates received severance packages.”

Circuit City employees are not unionized.

Simply negotiating a lower pay with the workers was “not a practical solution,” Babb said. “It sounds like a usable alternative in the abstract, but when you apply it, especially in the retail setting, that’s not a solution that works for either the employer or the employee.”

In response to a question, Babb said Circuit City chose not to lay off the managers who paid employees high wages because they did not make a “malicious mistake.”

Circuit City’s decision apparently has not stirred up much legal controversy. Babb only knew of one lawsuit filed. It was brought against the company by laid-off employees in California.

Circuit City employs 45,000 people in the United States, Babb said. Its Maine stores are in Bangor, Augusta and South Portland.

Four Bangor Circuit City workers lost their jobs as a result of the Richmond, Va.-based company’s “wage management initiative,” Babb said. Friday’s protesters thought there were fewer layoffs and in their chants and turns at the podium, they referred to “three workers with a total of 16 years of experience.”

The protest organizers did not know who had been laid off at the Bangor Circuit City, and that was one reason they staged the event, said organizer Jack McKay, director of Food and Medicine, a Brewer nonprofit group that provides funding to laid-off, low-income and unorganized workers.

“We want to reach out to the fired workers and let them know that we can give them $200 each from our Solidarity Fund,” McKay said. The laid-off Circuit City workers are encouraged to contact Food and Medicine at 989-5860 or to attend its public May Day Celebration on April 29, he said.

“Circuit City: Short Circuits its workers” and “Circuit City: Electrocutes Loyalty” were among the slogans printed on the handmade signs the protesters carried.

“Good worker? You’re fired. Cheap worker? You’re hired,” they chanted. The crowd consisted of representatives from United Steelworkers Union, the Eastern Maine Labor Council, and Food and Medicine. Some handed out bright orange fliers describing the protest to drivers entering the parking lot.

A few participants took to the podium to speak in support of proposed federal legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act, which among other things would protect workers who seek to form a union. The group praised Democratic U.S. Reps. Tom Allen and Michael Michaud of Maine for voting in favor of the bill and encouraged Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to do the same.

“Companies are just getting too powerful,” McKay said. “If we stick together we can make our country the way it should be.”