Levi closing was a "good" thing!
We are still kissing A**!!:
"Valdosta's plant closed in 1999, forcing 870 employees out of work. Most of them were making $8 to $12 an hour, a good wage for South Georgia."

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Fortunately, unlike some other apparel makers, Levi Strauss can usually be expected to provide generous severance packages that include help with training and finding other jobs. Valdosta employees received full pay for eight months, up to three weeks' worth of severance pay for each year worked, and $6,000 per person for education, child care, or to start up a small business.
We hope the soon-to-be ex-employees in San Antonio find new jobs or even new careers without suffering too many financial problems.

Ok, how many people at this paper were here when the plant closed forcing all these folks into other low paying jobs? I have been here since 1998 and saw what happened when the plant closed down. The Levi people gave out some serious money during this time; severance pay, training for employees, small business grants and all other "benefits". But they also played a huge public relations game and pumped money into community agencies to promote themselves as the "Company that Cares".
And this paper, the local elected officials, and the Chamber of Commerce became the cheerleaders for the plant closing down. They all are still apologizing for Levi closing down the plant and taking almost 900 decent paying jobs out of this community leaving the majority of its workers to find service industry jobs making substantially less money with little if no benefits. This means that people lost cars, houses, and health insurance which meant the community as a WHOLE suffered greatly for this loss.

But, The VDT thinks this is a good thing according to the editorial they published today.

And other issue they do not even address is all those poor folks in countries they set up new plants. So, Levi gave it's workers here a very good "see ya later" package, shut down and sold off it's property and completely restarted it plants from scratch in ANOTHER county, hired and trained new workers, completely revamped all the shipping issues, and STILL made money. Doesn't it even cross our minds at how much they are paying poor folks in this new plant......maybe a dollar or two an hour? And benefits...you can forget about that.
So, Levi's closes it's plants all over the US making people poor and moved to poor countries and pay the folks there poor wages. How does this benefit anyone but Levi.

The clothing business is roughly competitive, and Levi Strauss has seen sales fall from $7.1 billion in 1996 to $4.1 billion last year. That might still seem like a lot of money, but obviously it's a downward spiral the company needs to stop.

This paper sucks!