100 workers at Lear lose jobs.

Lear lays off 100 workers in Lebanon. That is 15% of the workforce. Tri Cities.com has this article.

Here are some Lear facts from the article.

The Lebanon plant has been losing jobs for years. In 2003, it employed 850 people, according to Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority documents. By the end of 2004, 791 people worked at the factory, including 80 temporary employees.
As of the end of 2005, plant employment had slipped to 678. The latest layoff of more than 100 employees represented a 15 percent cut to the work force.
Last year, Lear laid off nearly 600 employees elsewhere in Virginia - at factories in Winchester and Covington.

Lets look at that for a minute. They had 850 in 2003, cut down to 791 plus 80 temps by the end of 2004. 791 + 80 = 871. Please explain how that works? They cut 59 good paying full time jobs and replaced them with 80 low paying no benefit temps. Now here is the kicker. Those laid off are Union workers. UAW to the bone. If you can explain how any union would tolerate that you win a prize! I would think that before you lay off a full time union worker all the temps would have to go. I would also bet that there are still temps working at the plant now. How did the company treat those 100 who got laid off? The article reads:

Lear Corp. did not file a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice. The state ordinarily requires such notices when a company intends to lay off more than 60 workers.
Puchalsky said she wasn't certain why the notification was not filed. Notice is not required in circumstances in which an affected company had no warning of the loss of business that led to the layoffs, she said.
"Obviously, when a WARN notice is required by law, we file one," she said.

Now that is a great company and union! No warning? GM announced their layoff and plant closing months ago. Where is the union I ask. What did these workers pay dues for? Loosing the jobs takes away from all the praise for the high tech jobs that are coming to Lebanon. Jobs workers here cant fill. I posted about that twice before. The first one is here, and the other one is here. Give them a look. I think they prove the high tech jobs Warner-Kaine praised are a crock of ****. Lets not talk about retraining because that is years away. I will close with a quote from one of my earlier posts.

The courses the college offers now don't give students the sufficient education to get jobs with either company, said Sim Ewing, vice chancellor for finance and governmental affairs at UVa-Wise.

Technorati : News, UAW, Unions, Virginia, Virginia News