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Car-heating company goes south

-- Over 200 Winnipeggers losing jobs -- 'Death by a thousand cuts': union

By: Murray McNeill

Posted: 07/12/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

A Winnipeg plant that has long kept North American drivers warm in winters with block heaters and interior car warmers is packing up and heading south, taking nearly 200 jobs along with it.

A staff representative for the union representing workers at the Phillips & Temro Industries Ltd. heating products plant on Paquin Road -- Local 9074 of the United Steelworkers -- said the company has already started shipping out equipment to a sister plant in Eden Prairie, Minn.

"Our guys are having to pack it (the equipment) up and send off their jobs," Leslie McNabb said Wednesday.

"It's a really, really, sad situation."

Senior officials with the Eden Prairie-based company could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Phillips & Temro first announced its plans to close the Winnipeg plant in April, saying the work was being transferred to other sister plants and 170 workers would be losing their jobs.

But McNabb maintains it's more than 200.

She said 20 to 30 workers have already either been laid off or have left on their own, and about 180 still remain.

She said another 35 workers will be let go at the end of August, with more layoffs to follow each month until everyone is gone by the end of December.

"So it's death by a thousand cuts."

The specialty parts manufacturer produces a variety of cold-start products -- things such as engine heaters, car warmers and battery warmers -- emission-control products, and intake- and exhaust-silencing components.

It has had a manufacturing presence in Winnipeg since 1920, when local businessman James B. Carter launched a company that later become known as Carter Temro.

That firm merged with Minnesota-based Phillips Manufacturing Co. in 1972 to create Phillips & Temro Industries.

Phillips & Temro, which has changed hands several times since then, was acquired last February by Boston-based Audax Group.

Two months later, it announced it would be closing the Winnipeg heating-products facility, but it would be retaining a second production plant on the same Paquin Road site.

The much-smaller Cowl Silencing plant makes intake- and exhaust-silencing equipment.

McNabb said it only employs about 30 to 35 workers, who are represented by a different union. A spokesperson for that group -- the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers International Union -- could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

In a written statement released last April, Phillips & Temro said the heating-products facility was being closed for competitive reasons.

"We regret having to take this action, but the highly competitive nature of our industry and the changes in the industry demand we change in order to continue to be profitable," said Kathleen Boe, the company's vice-president of operations.

But McNabb doesn't buy that. She said the union has been told the Winnipeg plant was making a healthy profit.

"We had a really well-tuned operation. There were people there that had been there for over 30 years," she said.

"This is not about losing money. This is about making more money."

McNabb said 90 per cent of the plant's workers are women.

She predicted they'll have difficulty finding new jobs because many are over the age of 50.

And they'll have an even harder time finding jobs that pay as well, she said, adding 60 to 70 per cent of them are paid between $15 and $20 an hour, and some tradespeople make as much as $30 an hour.

Ron Koslowsky, vice-president of the Manitoba division of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, said he'll be sorry to see the heating products plant close.

"It always hurts when you lose any manufacturer," he said.

"But they had a kind of interesting product and we don't have a ton of that kind of industry in Manitoba."

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 12, 2012 B3

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