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:: Monday, January 26, 2004 ::

Longtime Levi's workers face strange task of finding new jobs By Ron Wilson, San Antonio Express-News
The 800 workers averaged 17 years of service to Levi, Miller said. Because they had been there so long, it would be hard to find new jobs that paid as well.

Those coming out of 20 years at the plant were like people stepping out of a time capsule, he said.

Levi closes its last 2 plants in U.S. AP, Billings Gazette (Jan. 11)
This spring, San Francisco-based Levi's will complete the shift to contract production by shuttering its three remaining company-owned plants in Canada.

Walter Loeb, a retail analyst in New York, says the profitability of moving production to China and elsewhere is worth more than a symbolic presence in the United States, where Levi's had made jeans since the 1870s.

"Investors are not very sentimental these days," he said.

Always Low Wages by Brian Bolton, Sojourners Magazine/February 2004
Wal-Mart benefits from its lower-cost vendors, who manufacture many Wal-Mart products in Mexico, China, and Bangladesh. Laborers in these factories frequently work more than 80 hours per week for a few dollars a day. These factories are the reason apparel-maker Levi Strauss is closing its last U.S. manufacturing facilities this year. After 150 years of making jeans at 60 U.S. factories, Levi’s will sell only imported jeans and has introduced a low-price line at Wal-Mart in hopes of saving its failing business. When manufacturing jobs float overseas, many U.S. workers turn to one of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million jobs—not much of a consolation prize.

‘Armies of Compassion’ By Arlene Getz, Newsweek
“Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well” (Career Press).
The book, co-authored by journalist Karen Southwick, looks at some of the companies that have adopted direct community service strategies. Hasbro is one: It allows employees four hours of paid time off a month to do community service. Levi Strauss teaches workers outside the United States about their rights. Starbucks works with farmers to set up buffers around biodiversity preserves in coffee-growing regions.

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