Workers' Message to CEO Chapman: "Keep Angelus Can
Open!"
PITTSBURGH, Dec. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/
-- The United Steelworkers (USW) today held
simultaneous candlelight vigils at Barry-Wehmiller's corporate
headquarters near St. Louis and
the company's Angelus Can facility near Los Angeles, where workers were told last
month that their jobs are being eliminated as the company shifts
production to non-union facilities in Ohio.
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USW District 12 Director Bob
LaVenture said that USW Local 8957 members from California traveled to St. Louis specifically to encourage
Barry-Wehmiller Chairman and CEO Robert
Chapman to keep the profitable Angelus Can facility
open.
"Steelworkers at Angelus Can have spent generations making
machinery for customers such as Pepsi, Campbell Soup, ConAgra,
Del Monte, Coca-Cola,
Anheuser-Busch, Miller Brewing and Nestle," LaVenture said. "We
cannot allow the proud tradition of quality and profitability to
end in Vernon."
USW Local 8957 President Steve
Bjornback said that production at Angelus Can has rebounded
since the global economic collapse of 2008 and recession that
followed and that the union will neither back down nor quietly walk
away.
"In October, management invited us to celebrate record revenues
of $4.7 million for just one month at
our facility," Bjornback said. "Yet during the first week of
November, the company announced plans to shut us down, and we need
to show Robert Chapman that we
Steelworkers will stand up and fight back."
The USW is North America's
largest industrial union, representing 850,000 workers in metals,
mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and
the energy-producing industries.
CONTACT:Shawn Gilchrist, USW – sgilchrist@usw.org or (412)
562-6968
SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)