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Associated Press
Published December 20, 2004

GREENVILLE - Hourly employees represented by the United Auto Workers
have overwhelmingly approved a severance agreement with Swedish
appliance maker Electrolux AB, which is shutting down its Greenville
refrigerator factory.

Tony Evans, a spokesman for Electrolux Home Products North America in
Augusta, Ga., said the company was glad to have the package in place.

"We are very pleased that Electrolux and the UAW have an agreement to
help the employees during the transition," Evans said. "It's a good
package for all because it goes beyond the current benefits package."

The Electrolux plant has 2,700 employees and is Montcalm County's
largest employer. It manufactures 1.6 million refrigerators annually
under such brands as Frigidaire, Kenmore, White-Westinghouse, Gibson and
Kelvinator.

Electrolux announced Jan. 16 that it was closing the factory by next
November and moving production to factories in Juarez, Mexico, and
Anderson, S.C.

Jim Hoisington, president of UAW Local 137, said members voted 1,283-89
to approve the severance agreement. It will provide workers with
severance pay of $400 for every year of service, twice the amount that
had been written into their existing contract.

The agreement also will pay nearly 75 percent of a full pension to
workers who have 10 years of service but have not turned 55 by the time
the plant closes, Hoisington said. The existing contract offered less
than 50 percent of a full pension, he said.

The average hourly wage for Electrolux workers is $15 an hour, he said.
The Associated Press reported earlier this year that the company could
pay Mexican workers as little as $1.57 an hour

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...00333/1001/news

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