State losing 840 jobs, 90 in Gainesville

UNDATED - Word came over the weekend of three plant closings in Georgia - including one in Gainesville - that will mean the loss of 840 jobs.

More than 300 people will lose their jobs when Wescast Industries Inc. will close its Cordele plant at the end of April, company officials announced.

A deal to sell the plant fell through and the Canadian auto parts company ``had no choice but to close (it) down,'' said chairman and CEO Ed Frackowiak.

Company officials held a meeting Friday to inform employees.

There are plans to give employees severance packages, but ``some will be released earlier,'' Frackowiak said.

Cordele-Crisp Chamber of Commerce officials will do what is necessary to help the employees find new jobs, said chamber president Monica Simmons.

Frackowiak said in a July press release that the Cordele operation had been ``struggling for some time,'' foreshadowing the plant's closure.

Brantford, Ontario-based Wescast, founded in 1902, is the world's largest supplier of exhaust manifolds for passenger cars and light trucks.

TUCKER PLANT

A division of electronics giant Siemens will close its metal circuit-breaker box factory in Tucker next year, eliminating about 450 local jobs.

Siemens Energy & Automation, which has owned the Tucker plant since 1983, will move its Tucker operations to plants in El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, a spokesman said.

The plant's operations will start relocating in June or July, and the move should be completed by March 2006.

The company blamed the move on market "pressures to reduce our cost bases and improve operating efficiency," said Tom Varney, a company spokesman. Both the Texas and Mexico plants make the same circuit-breaker boxes made in Tucker.

Local employees may be offered jobs in Texas or Mexico on a case-by-case basis, Varney said.

Siemens also will seek help for its employees under the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the company may offer separation pay, extended health benefits and career transition services to laid-off employees.

In November 2003, the same Siemens division moved another operation --- one that made residential power meters --- out of the Tucker facility to the same plants in Texas and Mexico. That move eliminated 150 jobs.

GAINESVILLE PLANT

Alexis PlaySafe, which has been manufacturing infant clothing in Gainesville for about 48 years, is closing up shop, and company officials say about 90 employees will lose their jobs.

The company, which is a subsidiary of Warren Featherbone, laid off 40 people in January.

Company officials say the operation is being sold to New Jersey-based Samara Brothers Inc.

CEO Chris Cosper said the 90 employees will have 4-6 weeks of work before the layoffs. Company Chairman Gus Whalen says the workers' 401 (k) plans are fully guaranteed and those who have been contributing since the plan's inception in the early 1970s stand to make a ``very significant sum.''

Whalen says the plant is closing because U.S. apparel manufacturing is no longer financially viable. Garments made domestically cost $7.63 cents to produce, while those made in China cost less than $2 each.

Whalen says it is likely Warren Featherbone will reinvent itself and stay in business. It would not be the first time the company has had to to do this, according to the Alexis PlaySafe Web site, which says it has prospered through a series of reinventions.

Originally established by E.K. Warren, the company manufactured and marketed Warren's patented invention, Featherbone. The product was made from turkey feather quills and used as a stiffener in women's corsets. Featherbone was hugely successful until 1928, when it was replaced by plastic. The company responded by adapting plastic into the first plastic baby pants worn over cloth diapers. That reinvention placed the company in a new business in which it thrived for many years.

In 1955, the company relocated its headquarters from Three Oaks, Michigan Gainesville.

Within a few years, plastic baby pants were themselves replaced, this time by disposable diapers. The company reinvented itself again through diversification into the infant's apparel market and began doing business in a new and growing channel of distribution, department stores.

This reinvention occurred through the company's earlier acquisition of Alexis, Inc., producers of the ALEXIS brand of infant's wear.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.