Union draws crowd (Mill employees are being terminated by Smurfit-Stone and must reapply)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.brewtonstandard.com/articles/2007/08/31/news/news02.txt

By Kerry Whipple Bean - publisher

The rain and thunder that greeted 500 union members at Fort Crawford Park Monday night was appropriate, United Steelworkers official Stan Johnson said.

“These are stormy times,” Johnson said as he stood before hundreds of out-of-town Steelworkers who visited Brewton for a prayer vigil in honor of Smurfit-Stone workers. The majority of those in attendance were union members from cities around Alabama. Many had driven from Destin, Fla., where a Steelworkers training session was held over the weekend.

Johnson, director of the Southeast's union Region 9, said they came in support of Brewton mill workers, many of whom are in the middle of interviews with Georgia-Pacific, which bought the mill for $355 million this month. The deal, expected to be final at the end of the month, is an asset sale, which guarantees transfer of the property but not the employees and their contracts.

Mill employees are being terminated by Smurfit-Stone and must reapply for their jobs with Georgia-Pacific.

“Smurfit-Stone decided to sell the Brewton mill in an asset sale,” Johnson said. “They decided to place a real value on the land and the machinery but they placed no value at all on the men and women who built that mill, ran that mill and made it profitable.”

FULL story at link.