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Paper mill workers eligible for severance deals
(Virginian-Pilot, The (Norfolk, VA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 20--The 1,050 hourly workers at International Paper's Franklin mill will be eligible to apply for voluntary severance packages, the company said Wednesday.
The goal is to avert layoffs after International Paper shuts down one of its five machines on Sunday, communications manager Desmond Stills said. The severance offer will be open through Dec. 8, he said.
The company announced last week that it would close the machine because of declining demand for envelope paper. Fifty affected employees will be transferred within the mill during the interim, Stills said.
International Paper also has identified "as many as 50 additional reductions that might best optimize the mill's needs going forward," he said.
The company, he said, does not have a target number of severance requests.
"We don't want anybody to leave the mill involuntarily," Stills said. "Our goal is for people who may want to leave for reasons of their own to do that and then to allow people to stay who want to stay.... We will look at the employees who apply for the packages and then, based upon the needs of the mill, we would determine how many we would allow to receive the package."
He declined to disclose terms of the severance package. The mill has 1,050 hourly workers who would be eligible to apply for the package, and 150 salaried workers, Stills said.
Carroll Story, president of Local 2-1488 of the United Steelworkers of America, which represents some of the mill's workers, said the union negotiated with the company to provide the severance package. The arrangement should allow senior employees to retire and the company to retain some junior people, he said.
The goal, Story said, is to avoid layoffs, "but achieving that is going to be a hard task.... People have got to make decisions in a short amount of time. These will be life-changing decisions. The economy has brought it on us."
Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com
To see more of the The Virginian-Pilot, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pilotonline.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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