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Viasystems Shutdown Betrays Workers, Community
Viasystems Group Inc., is closing its Richmond, Va., manufacturing plant and moving the operation to China.
The layoff, the third announced by the company this year, pulls the plug on the remaining 900 jobs at the plant, where CWA members make circuit boards for major customers in telecommunications, networking and other industries.
When Viasystems bought the plant from Lucent Technologies in 1996, 1,800 employees — members of CWA Local 2260 — made sacrifices in wages and retirement income to keep their jobs, make the company profitable and invest in their future.
“Now Viasystems is an enormously successful company, posting record earnings at the end of last year, but the workers who helped build Viasystems won’t be sharing in its success,” CWA President Morton Bahr said. “Not only is Viasystems destroying quality American jobs but it is supporting sweatshop conditions in a country that has a very poor record of workers’ rights and human rights overall.”
Viasystems said it was moving the circuit board manufacturing to China, where a system of forced labor and government control translates into an hourly wage of just $1.66.
Workers at the Richmond plant, largely minority workers, earned an average wage of about $18 an hour. These wages enabled them to support their families, participate in their communities and contribute to the local economy, said Pete Catucci, CWA vice president for the Mid-Atlantic region.
Catucci said the plant has been a mainstay of the Richmond economy since the early 1970s, always providing good, quality jobs and wages for Richmond workers. Western Electric Co. originally owned it.
To Viasystems, wages at the Richmond plant are “not competitive” and justify the move to China, where human and labor rights are routinely violated while multi-national corporations look the other way. To workers at Viasystems and CWA members, and the Richmond community, “this is a sad betrayal,” CWA Local 2260 President Tommy Thurston said.
Members of Congress soon will have the opportunity to vote on whether to grant full trade status to China. Bahr urged all members to make certain their representatives in Congress have a full understanding of the vote’s consequences.
The layoff, the third announced by the company this year, pulls the plug on the remaining 900 jobs at the plant, where CWA members make circuit boards for major customers in telecommunications, networking and other industries.
When Viasystems bought the plant from Lucent Technologies in 1996, 1,800 employees — members of CWA Local 2260 — made sacrifices in wages and retirement income to keep their jobs, make the company profitable and invest in their future.
“Now Viasystems is an enormously successful company, posting record earnings at the end of last year, but the workers who helped build Viasystems won’t be sharing in its success,” CWA President Morton Bahr said. “Not only is Viasystems destroying quality American jobs but it is supporting sweatshop conditions in a country that has a very poor record of workers’ rights and human rights overall.”
Viasystems said it was moving the circuit board manufacturing to China, where a system of forced labor and government control translates into an hourly wage of just $1.66.
Workers at the Richmond plant, largely minority workers, earned an average wage of about $18 an hour. These wages enabled them to support their families, participate in their communities and contribute to the local economy, said Pete Catucci, CWA vice president for the Mid-Atlantic region.
Catucci said the plant has been a mainstay of the Richmond economy since the early 1970s, always providing good, quality jobs and wages for Richmond workers. Western Electric Co. originally owned it.
To Viasystems, wages at the Richmond plant are “not competitive” and justify the move to China, where human and labor rights are routinely violated while multi-national corporations look the other way. To workers at Viasystems and CWA members, and the Richmond community, “this is a sad betrayal,” CWA Local 2260 President Tommy Thurston said.
Members of Congress soon will have the opportunity to vote on whether to grant full trade status to China. Bahr urged all members to make certain their representatives in Congress have a full understanding of the vote’s consequences.