Workers battling factory closure
Planned shutdown to displace 350 in New Bedford
Scores of low-wage workers from a New Bedford factory that makes Army backpacks gathered for an emotional meeting yesterday with elected officials, clergy, and labor activists to demand that the 350-employee plant not be shuttered next month as planned.
“I’m scared,’’ said Ana Valle, 41, a single mother of four teenagers who works for Eagle Industries. “Where am I going to go? Where am I going to find a job? There’s no more work in New Bedford.’’
Valle, who makes $9 an hour, urged 100 of her co-workers to fight for their jobs, even though Eagle’s parent company,
“The managers don’t care,’’ said Valle, a native of Cape Verde. “They’d like the company to shut down.’’
A delegation of Eagle employees will travel to Washington Thursday to meet with US Senator John F. Kerry, US Representative Barney Frank, and the staff of US Senator Edward M. Kennedy to press their case. Those officials have written to the Army in defense of the New Bedford factory, the closing of which they have described as “abrupt and unnecessary.’’
In addition to the Washington trip, another delegation of workers is scheduled to visit the US Army Soldier Center in Natick, which awarded the backpack contract three years ago, to tell officials of the hardships that a shutdown would cause.
Brian Cullin, a spokesman for Alliant, confirmed yesterday that plans to close have not changed. The factory has been “underutilized,’’ Cullin said, and closing the plant is necessary to keep Eagle on sound economic footing.
“We regret very much having to do this with our workforce,’’ Cullin said.
That stance was greeted with scorn by Brian K. Gomes, a councilor at large in New Bedford who attended the meeting.
“I call this corporate Monopoly,’’ Gomes said after the gathering. “I believe those jobs are being taken for profit down to Puerto Rico. They came here and used the people of this city.’’
The factory has changed hands three times since a massive raid by US agents detained at least 361 illegal immigrants there in March 2007. The plant, then owned by the Michael Bianco Co., was purchased eight months later by Eagle Industries.
On April 1, Eagle Industries was bought by Alliant Techsystems, a Minnesota-based defense and aerospace company. Less than two months later, on May 31, Alliant announced its plans to close the factory.
Yesterday’s meeting, held at St. James Roman Catholic Church in New Bedford, mixed anger, fear, and strategy to bring pressure on Alliant and the Army, which must approve moving the work to Puerto Rico.
On Thursday, the Community Economic Development Center in New Bedford estimated that closing the factory, one of the city’s largest employers, would cost taxpayers more than $4 million in unemployment and health benefits.
“We’re committed to continuing this fight with the workers, and demanding that the Army deny the company permission to move out of New Bedford,’’ said meeting attendee Stephen Wishart, a coordinator with Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.
The Eagle workers, many of whom are Hispanic, Cape Verdean, or Portuguese immigrants, are not members of a union.
A letter from Frank, read at the gathering, said that he and the senators had requested a meeting with Alliant’s chief executive officer, Daniel Murphy, but that Murphy refused.
Cullin said senior corporate staff had been in contact with the congressman’s office.
