Otis moving jobs from Bloomington

At peak operating capacity in 1989, the Otis Elevator Plant in Bloomington employed 1,180 workers. Today, 365 employees report to work at the plant, and following Thursday's announcement that Otis will cease all local manufacturing operations by the end of 2004, the number will once again be reduced.\nOtis said the plant will eliminate 135 hourly and 30 salaried product manufacturing positions currently occupied by Bloomington residents. Two hundred salaried positions will remain in Bloomington.\nHourly workers at Otis make an average of $23 per hour, including benefits, with salaried employees earning a yearly average of $60,000. Essentially, the CLC serves as "a nucleus between sales and manufacturing," said Silvio Albino, manager of communication for Otis Elevator in North and South America. Of the 165 local jobs lost, Albino said, 45 percent have been fully eliminated because the Bloomington product line, the Geared Elevation Model, has been discontinued. Another 14 percent have been lost due to a drop in volume, 18 percent are being relocated to Asia and 22 percent are staying in the United States, divided between distribution centers.\n"I think it's always difficult to see people lose their jobs, and Otis has been a mainstay of the Bloomington community for many years," said Denise Lessow, board chair of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. \nOtis is considered the world's largest manufacturer of elevators, escalators, moving walkways and shuttle systems and currently accounts for nearly 27 percent of the global elevator market and employs approximately 60,000 people worldwide.\nAlbino attributes the relocation of production to the shift of the high-rise elevator market. \n"Seventy percent of our demand right now is in Asia, and it makes sense for Otis to position its factories and suppliers to serve its market," he said.\nThe recent shift follows the redistribution of production of the "New Gen2" low-rise elevator to Mexico, a move that decreased the need for local production of the model. \nThe plant's three-year contract with Local 826 of the International Union of Electrical Workers/Communications Workers of America expires in May 2004.\nSixteen-year Otis employee Mark Abell has served as both labor-union vice president and president. Abell attributes the recent news to the basic principles of business.\n"If you are in business, you are in business to make money," he said. "The bottom line is profits. It doesn't matter about the 350 people who have lost their jobs in the past three years, the 135 (hourly workers) losing jobs this year or the 200 people who may later. It's about expanding the bottom line."\nBloomington, once home to General Electric and Thompson Consumer Electronics, has seen its share of discontinued production. Roger Pemberton, a former Thompson employee whose job was terminated with the plant's closing in 1998, can sympathize with downsized workers. \n"I've known this was going to happen (to Otis) since Thompson shut down and moved to Mexico," Pemberton said. "There's no such thing as a middle-class worker anymore. If you aren't high-tech you aren't anything, and not everyone can be trained to be high-tech"