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Plant Closing to Cost 480 Jobs; MT Picture Display to Close in February

Posted on: Thursday, 1 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By Ben Sutherly, Dayton Daily News, Ohio

Dec. 1--TROY -- MT Picture Display Corp. announced the largest layoff in city history Wednesday, saying it will close its television picture tube plant in February and eliminate the plant's remaining 480 jobs.

Flat-panel televisions and less expensive Asian imports doomed the plant, which at its peak six years ago was the city's largest industrial employer with more than 1,400 workers.

Many employees were told during a 6 a.m. shift change Wednesday that the plant would close Feb. 3, company spokesman Greg Tatusko said. Other employees were notified through a recorded telephone message. Notification meetings will continue through Friday.

Workers learned two weeks ago that Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. of Osaka, Japan, majority owner of the MT Picture Display joint venture with Toshiba Corp., was deciding the factory's fate. Workers were told a shutdown was possible, Tatusko said.

The Troy plant is the last remaining U.S. supplier of the bulky cathode ray tubes traditionally used in television sets. It sells the tubes to assemblers of televisions under brand names such as Panasonic. (Sony still has a U.S. CRT manufacturing plant for its own televisions.).

Tatusko said all 480 workers, including more than 100 salaried workers, will receive severance packages that include:

-- company-paid health benefits through April

-- two weeks pay for their first year of service with the company, plus one week of pay for each additional year of service. For example, an employee who had worked at the plant for 10 years would receive 11 weeks of severance pay.

-- outplacement services such as career counseling and instruction on writing resumes and interviewing for jobs.

Laid-off workers also will be eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance, a federal program providing job retraining and health coverage to workers who lose jobs to foreign competition.

In addition to the Troy plant, Matsushita Electric will close a 10-year-old MT Picture plant in Germany that employs 605 workers.

Local officials had expected the Troy plant to close, but not so soon.

"The timing is a little bit of a surprise," said Chuck Cochran, president of the publicly and privately funded Troy Development Council. "I had hoped they might be able to get through 2006, but I knew it was really a struggle."

In recent years, the Troy plant had been in precipitous decline. The plant laid off 300 workers in December 2004 -- the same month its sister factory in Horseheads, N.Y., closed. In October, the Troy plant cut 236 more hourly workers.

The plant's sales have declined significantly over the past three years. For example, sales for July were down 60 percent from sales in July 2004.

Company officials had expected consumers to switch to new flat-panel technologies such as liquid crystal display and plasma, but not so swiftly, Tatusko said.

The company has shut down all but one production line, which makes 32-inch tubes; a year ago, the company was still operating three lines.

MT Picture remains the city's largest user of water, despite a 40 percent drop in consumption between 2002 and 2005. The company has accounted for 13.6 percent of the city's water revenues and 11.5 percent of sewer revenues so far this year.

Thanks to healthy water and sewer fund balances, Mark Livengood, the city's utilities supervisor, doesn't anticipate an increase hike in water and sewer rates to offset the loss of revenue.

The city, in fact, planned for the worst when it put together the 2006 budget this fall, forecasting water and sewer revenues from MT Picture Display only through March.

When it opened in 1989, MT Picture Display, then known as Panasonic, was seen as this manufacturing city of 22,000's answer to downsizing in the 1980s at two homegrown international corporations, Hobart Corp. and Hobart Brothers.

Now city officials hope a new Honda distribution hub and procurement operations support office, expected to create 130 jobs upon opening in late 2007, will help offset the loss of MT Picture Display.

"We're right in the middle of the automotive corridor," said Cochran, who hopes the new Honda facilities will attract additional automotive suppliers. "Is that going to overcome the loss of a company of this size? I'd hate to hazard a guess."

Cochran couldn't say if the new Honda plant would be a good fit for displaced workers.

"There is going to be absorption of displaced workers, but how many? We don't know," Mayor Mike Beamish said.

"The lesson to be learned is nothing is permanent in the ... global economy," Beamish said. Still, he said, "I feel for everyone losing their job at this holiday season."

Recruiting another employer of MT Picture Display's magnitude would be a tall order, Cochran said.

MT Picture Display was the city's largest source of income tax revenue in 2004. Income tax is the city's largest source of money, accounting for about a third of total revenues.

The city received $12.2 million in income tax for the first 11 months of this year, compared with $10.8 million for the first 11 months of 2003 (a delinquent payment by an employer of about $2 million in 2004 inflated revenues for the first 11 months of that year to $13.5 million).

City officials said growth at other Troy companies such as Faurecia and F&P America have helped stabilize income tax revenues.

MT Picture also pays more real and personal property tax than any other Troy business, according to the Miami County auditor's office. In 2004, despite numerous tax breaks, it paid more than $2.31 million in real and personal property taxes, of which $1.73 million went to the Troy schools.

Tatusko said a sale of the turquoise-colored, 1 million square foot plant on 87 acres at Interstate 75 and Ohio 55 was "the most likely option," but said no final decision to sell the plant has been made.

"If we get a big company to come in that building, it would be a godsend, no question about it," Cochran said. "But I would not keep my fingers crossed for that to happen."

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Copyright (c) 2005, Dayton Daily News, Ohio

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Source: Dayton Daily News

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