Workers’ Message to CEO Chapman: “Keep Angelus Can Open!”
Contact: Shawn Gilchrist, sgilchrist@usw.org or (412) 562-6968
PITTSBURGH – The United Steelworkers (USW) today held simultaneous candlelight vigils at Barry-Wehmiller’s corporate headquarters near St. Louis and the company’s Angelus Can facility near Los Angeles, where workers were told last month that their jobs are being eliminated as the company shifts production to non-union facilities in Ohio.
USW District 12 Director Bob LaVenture said that USW Local 8957 members from California traveled to St. Louis specifically to encourage Barry-Wehmiller Chairman and CEO Robert Chapman to keep the profitable Angelus Can facility open.
“Steelworkers at Angelus Can have spent generations making machinery for customers such as Pepsi, Campbell Soup, ConAgra, Del Monte, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Miller Brewing and Nestle,” LaVenture said. “We cannot allow the proud tradition of quality and profitability to end in Vernon.”
USW Local 8957 President Steve Bjornback said that production at Angelus Can has rebounded since the global economic collapse of 2008 and recession that followed and that the union will neither back down nor quietly walk away.
“In October, management invited us to celebrate record revenues of $4.7 million for just one month at our facility,” Bjornback said. “Yet during the first week of November, the company announced plans to shut us down, and we need to show Robert Chapman that we Steelworkers will stand up and fight back.”
The USW is North America’s largest industrial union, representing 850,000 workers in metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries.
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