
January 25th / 27th, 2008
"Hanesbrands Goes on Panty Raid"
Last week came the announcement that 120 more people would lose their jobs.
Ho hum, just another typical day for Hanesbrands.
The layoffs, 80 in Davie and 40 in Asheboro, are the latest efforts of
Hanesbrands executives to improve profits by closing American plants and putting
Americans out of work. I believe the running total is nearly 14,000 in the
past year including over 1400 locally.
Workers at the Advance plant make elastic which is sewn outside the U.S. for
inclusion into the waistbands of women’s underwear. Hanesbrands Executive
Vice President Gerald Evans rationalized the lay-offs to the Winston-Salem
Journal by saying, “It is not cost-efficient for us to operate dedicated plants
in the United States and then send these specialized fabrics offshore for
inclusion in the production of our products”. Don’t you love the double talk
logic of that statement? Of course it’s not cost-efficient, because
Hanesbrands outsourced the work in the first place! Thus, Evans is blaming the job
losses on a condition his company created.
And not to digress with my rant against Hanesbrands, but I am also livid
about the statement from Michael Lord, Associate Professor of Management at Wake
Forest University who told the Journal, “If you make garments in another
country, it might be much more efficient to also make the necessary components
overseas as well….it has a lot to do with running a more efficient global
supply chain”.
Hey, thanks for putting a human spin on the story for us, Professor Robot.
Where’s the compassion? Where’s the anger? Does anyone care about these
120 jobless folks except them? Will you continue to buy Hanes underwear at
Wal-Mart and Kohl's knowing that thousands of American families are suffering
because you want to save a buck?
Let’s suppose for a moment that you really don’t care about plant closings.
Let’s examine the buck you’re saving on panties. Every time Hanesbrands
lays-off an American worker, the company can file with the Labor Department for
employee benefits through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reform Act.
Displaced employees can then apply for a host of services, including
training. They can also receive up to two years pay, including the last 78 weeks
from TAA. And who foots the bill for these benefits? Not Hanesbrands. You pay
for it with your Federal tax dollars.
Now don’t get me wrong. I want laid off workers to get every bit of help
they need, but shouldn’t that help come from or be paid for by Hanesbrands?
This is a company that made $4.5 billion in revenues in 2006, and
they did it by continuing to put Americans out of work while replacing them
with Dominicans, Mexicans, and Asians. Hanesbrands currently employs 50,000
people, but 35,000 of them are outside the U.S. How are those discount panties
feeling to you now?
The villain behind the villain in this story is so-called free trade.
NAFTA, CAFTA, and other trade agreements are killing North Carolina, and companies
like Hanesbrands are simply hiding behind those agreements in order to
justify cutting their American workforce. The TAA was established in good faith to
help people who lost their job because of imports or a shift in production
to another country to which the U.S. has an agreement. If Hanesbrands closed
every plant in this country because of hardship, and then dissolved the
company, we would feel their pain. But Hanesbrands management isn’t feeling any
hardship. They’re simply firing higher-paid American workers and replacing
them with low-wage foreign workers.
A confidential source at the Department of Labor agreed that such practices
abuse the spirit of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reform Act, and that
something should be done to change the process. One solution is to require
offending companies like Hanesbrands to be assessed a TAA fee for every displaced
employee so that all transition services and benefits would be paid by the
employer and not the taxpayers.
We also need to repeal all current trade agreements and re-evaluate them to
make sure America enjoys a truly fair and balanced trading status.
If something isn’t done soon, there won’t be enough of us working in North
Carolina to pay the taxes to support TAA and unemployment benefits.
It’s enough to get your panties all twisted up in a knot.
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