http://www.rrstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041106/BUSINESS05/411060308ROCKFORD —- Hamilton Sundstrand, the region’s largest manufacturing employer, plans to lay off 10 percent of its work force starting next year as part of a national restructuring plan that the company says will allow it to enhance its “competitive position.”
The Rockford layoffs are contingent on the company satisfying the terms of its collective bargaining agreement. Company officials and members of United Auto Workers Local 592, which represents 180 of the 275 Rockford workers slated to be laid off, are scheduled to meet starting Monday. They will discuss why Sundstrand made the decision, whether the jobs must go and whether any affected workers would be allowed to follow the work to the other plants.
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To that, company spokeswoman Melissa Marsden said, “There is nothing that a city, county or state official could do or could have done to preclude this action.”
The layoffs in Rockford will take place in 2005, although the company declined to offer specific dates. They will come from two Sundstrand operations: repair and overhaul at the Harrison Avenue plant and electronics manufacturing at 11th Street.
The work will go from Rockford to nonunion Sundstrand plants in Florida, Arizona and Puerto Rico.
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