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HPM Corporation Greed Costs Mt. Gilead 600 Jobs Mount
Gilead may not look like a crime scene, but after what happened last
year, this tiny Ohio town should be cordoned off with yellow police
tape. The
citizens here were mugged, robbed and left to bleed by the 125 year-old
HPM Corporation, the largest employer in all Morrow County. Like
so many U.S. manufacturers, HPM went bankrupt last year. The company
laid off some 600 people, erasing many of the region’s best-paying
jobs. HPM
didn’t fail because of cheap foreign imports or a drastic drop in
orders. HPM didn’t flee Ohio for the low wages of Mexico or China. In
fact, when HPM closed its doors July 1, 2001 employees were still
booking orders for their respected line of plastic extrusion, injection
molding and die cast machinery. Employee
insurance checks started bouncing in April and May. Local IAM leaders
discovered that HPM’s owners had stopped paying premiums to the
carrier in March, and the carrier had canceled the company’s policy.
Yet HPM continued deducting the co-pays from employee paychecks for two
months after the cancellation. “They
sent my dentist a check that bounced. I had to go the bank, pick up the
check, and pay $10 to the bank for the bad check, plus pay the dentist.
Here I am on layoff, and I had to make good on that! When I called the
company to complain, they just said, ‘Oh, well’,” recalls Terry
Barnett who was laid off by HPM after 24 years. HPM
had done more than write thousands of dollars of bad insurance checks.
The L.A.-based owners who purchased HPM in 1995 had also defaulted on
$35 million in loans from the Fleet Capital Corporation. On July 1,
Fleet seized HPM’s assets, threw the company into bankruptcy, and
closed down the plant. “No
one knows what happened to all that money. The bankruptcy court is still
trying to figure that out. They didn’t invest it in new machinery, and
they didn’t pay back their debts,” said Earl Gilkison, business
representative for IAM District 54. The
company still owes the employees approximately $1 million in vacation
time, unpaid medical bills and deductions taken for non-existent
insurance coverage, he continues. “How
can a business do so well for 125 years, then new owners come along and
five years later, you lose everything?” wonders Bob Miller, who lost
his job after 33 years at HPM. “I’m
51 years old with school training as a Machinist and more than 30 years
experience. I’m out there looking for a job, but the only places that
are hiring pay maybe $6 or $7 an-hour, with no benefits. What am I going
to do? I can’t even afford to drive to some of those jobs for wages
like that. But my unemployment insurance runs out in two weeks, so maybe
I’ll have to take one of those jobs,” Miller adds.
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