672 Jeans Jobs Axed as Factory Shuts
Press Association, Ltd.
Nearly 700 workers at jeans company Levi-Strauss are facing redundancy after the news that it is closing one factory and cutting jobs at another.
The company’s plant at Whitburn, West Lothian, is to close with the loss of 586 jobs. A further 83 jobs are to go at a finishing plant in Bellshill, Lanarkshire – and a further three posts will be lost at the company’s Bothwell depot in Lanarkshire.
A spokesman said a number of plants world-wide had been closed as the market for jeans contracted due to a shrinking European youth population, and alternative products, such as chinos and video games, luring away teenage spending on which the company relied.
A formal 90-day consultation process involving the GMB union with which Levi’s has a partnership agreement has now begun and workers at the plants were told officially of the closures today.
In 1996 Levi’s entered an agreement with workers promising them one year’s salary bonus if the company reached a turnover target at the end of 2001.
The so-called GSSP will now form part of negotiations with unions for redundancy settlements for the sacked workers. Workers leaving the factory at Whitburn said they were shocked and devastated.
“We have been expecting something to happen for a few months, but we never thought there would be complete closure,” said one worker as she left a mass meeting of the workforce.
“I found out on the bus on the way to work,” said another worker. “It is a major shock to everybody. Where are we going to get jobs now?”
Production at the Whitburn plant stopped after the workforce was told of the closure and is not expected to resume for the next few days.
Frank Ross, Levi’s sourcing director, said: “This proposal has been forced upon us by a substantial decrease in jeans buying by a shrinking European youth population – projected to decline by a further 5% in the next five years – and a marked shift away from denim jeans as a fashion item.