Agreement reached with Hobbs employees

SPRING VALLEY — Employees at Spring Valley’s Honeywell Sensing and Controls Business, better known to local residents as Hobbs, overwhelmingly approved a severance agreement Tuesday.

On Aug. 24, company representatives announced plans to transition the workload to a plant in Juarez, Mexico, and eventually close the Spring Valley facility. The plant, which makes parts used in heavy equipment and recreational vehicles, had seen its orders shrink, and the workforce dropped from 140 a few years ago to less than half of that number.

Kevin Jordan, vice president of United Autoworkers Local 2059, said Wednesday union and company representatives negotiated until Friday before reaching a proposal.

Jordan said the proposal was presented to both shifts of employees Tuesday, and the employees voted to ratify the proposal by a 77-6 vote.

“We’re getting one week’s pay per year of service up to 26 years,” Jordan said.

That agreement applies to employees who have worked at the company for more than 10 years. Employees with less than five years of service will receive $1,000, and employees with five to nine years of service will receive $3,500. In addition, the company agreed to continue the employees’ insurance for three months after their final date.

The agreement will affect the 51 employees still working and the 44 who are presently laid off. Jordan said most of those were laid off in November 2008 except for about 10 who were laid off in February of this year. Jordan said the plant had been shut down one week per month since February due to the lack of orders.

Jordan said plant manager Aaron Berg met with them Tuesday to say he was in the process of putting a transition team together. No time line was given for closing the plant, but Jordan said he expected it would be in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2010.

Although Jordan said the employees were sorry to see the plant close, they were satisfied with the agreement.

“We were able to get everybody something,” he said. “A lot of us saw this coming, and it was just a matter of when.”