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German Firm Moves 4000 Kelowna Jobs to the U.S. Shining
pride and stark bitterness describe the people who build the
world-renowned Western Star trucks in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. There
is pride, because they know they built the best trucks in the world. They
are bitter because the 1,000-plus IAM members will lose their jobs when
parent company Freightliner, itself a division of Daimler/Chrysler,
leaves this picturesque Okanagan Valley community and moves production
to Portland, Oregon. But this pride is all they can cling to. The
October 12 announcement from Daimler in Stuttgart, Germany sent
shockwaves through this community. More
than 4,000 permanent and part-time jobs could disappear from the Kelowna
area. At Monashee Manufac-turing, a company where IAM members produce
parts and do custom machining for Western Star, employment there has
gone from a high of 125 members working three shifts to a meager 23. Russ
Wideman from Western Star, whose life is complicated by the additional
worry of fighting for Workers’ Compensation benefits for a serious
wrist injury, says, “We’ve still got a mortgage on this home and the
way things are going we’re close to losing it. It’s bad, really bad.
Our kids understand. They know we can’t do the things we used to do.
We can’t even go camping this year. It’s a struggle to get my
daughter into soccer because of the financial problems. It’s a
struggle to do anything that costs money.” Kevin
Weisbeck says he will have to uproot his family and move to Calgary to
pursue a new career in the computer field. “There’s
just no future here,” says Kevin who was already on layoff, but
expected to be recalled this spring, when news of the permanent closure
came.
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