Loss of high-tech Sony felt hardest by force of highly skilled workers.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - Sony's gone.

Sony Disc Manufacturing ended its eight-year presence here with shocking finality Wednesday, suddenly closing its factory, leaving teary employees and the rest of Eugene-Springfield to pick up the pieces.

The entertainment giant announced that it had "ceased operations" at the Gateway area manufacturing plant that employed 277 people. The cause: sagging demand for music CDs and a restructuring of its struggling parent company, Sony Music Entertainment.

The immediate closure of the prestigious high-tech employer will hurt the factory's suppliers and business partners, and sharply reduce Sony's property tax payments, although these losses don't seem to be overwhelming.

For Sony employees, however, the opposite is true: They're suddenly out of work and trying to recover from an announcement that left some of them feeling blindsided.

What does Starr Barton think of Sony? Barton, a printer of six years with the company, just started crying. "We're all really upset," she said. "We're all a big family in there and it happened really suddenly."

Some employees sensed Wednesday's announcement looming in the CD industry's stagnancy. Rumors of a closure or cutback at the International Way factory had intensified in recent days.

But the news - made in brief company notifications to some local officials on Tuesday, and at a closed meeting to employees at the plant on Wednesday - still was surprising to insiders, neighboring businesses and others.

Sony's public comment has been limited to a single press release, four paragraphs long, which it released Wednesday afternoon. No company officials have agreed to talk.

Sony didn't always try to keep such a low profile. Government officials lavished $12 million worth of subsidies and tax breaks on Sony in the past eight years; Sony has made many generous local charitable donations, and Sony executive Tom Costabile, while he headed the plant, took a prominent role in fostering economic development in Eugene-Springfield.

Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken said Sony could have warned the community about the pending closure.

"How Sony tells their employees, that is their business," Leiken said. "From my vantage point, it would have been easier if we'd had a communique letting us know what's going on and how we can be dealing with this."

Employees spoke well of Sony even minutes after the announcement, but many were uncertain of their next moves.

Tony Riddle said he'd try to find computer work locally "or just move on elsewhere," while Pam Warden, who worked in shipping and receiving, planned to balance her job search with the purchase of a puppy.

Myles Ralston, a 35-year-old maintenance technician and father of two, will consider going back to school to train as a machinist. "Thank you for the employment," he said. "I wish it could have been longer."

Sony's relations with workers have been stressful at times.

In 1997, union officials launched an unsuccessful drive to organize the plant, claiming employees were concerned about high turnover and heavy overtime. Early last year, following the layoff of 70 workers, several workers complained Sony had given them no severance pay. Sony wasn't legally required to give severance at that time, but many companies typically do so to reward longtime employees who are laid off.

This time around, workers will have a legal claim to a severance package, said Chuck Forster, executive director of the Lane Workforce Partnership, a job-assistance agency. Under federal law, when a company announces a complete plant closing, it must either give employees 60 days warning, or else 60 days pay, Forster said. Sony is likely to give the employees 60 days pay, he said.

As for finding new work, Sony employees "have the advantage of being well-skilled and highly motivated," said Jack Roberts, executive director of the Lane Metropolitan Partnership. That makes them an asset in attracting other businesses to the area, he said.

But Forster said most of Sony's workers - those in production, typically earning $9 to $10 an hour - will struggle to find similar work here, because their skills were specific to the only manufacturer of its kind in Lane County.

Sony employees in technology and management will be employable locally, Forster said, but those on the highest rungs will have to look elsewhere.

"It's a sad closure because they've been a great corporate partner in Lane County," Forster said. "It's important for people to realize that there will be jobs for people, it may take some time, they may need to change their career choices or be trained, but in the long term there will be job opportunities."

One big bruise to Lane County is the loss of the Sony name - a well-regarded international brand. That loss is hard to quantify, but other effects of the closure can be measured in dollars and cents.

For the fiscal year that ends June 30, Sony will pay $832,000 in taxes, Lane County taxation manager Angela Smith said. That money is divvied up between the Eugene School District for operations and bonds; for bonds in Lane County, Springfield and others; for Lane County operations; and for city of Springfield operations.

Sony will still have to pay property taxes on its plant for the fiscal year July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2004, based on the plant's value as of Jan. 1, 2003, Smith said.

After that, the taxable value of the plant may be cut if it remains empty.

Companies that thrived off Sony - at one point, the manufacturer did business with 460 of them in Eugene-Springfield - will have to rethink their budgets.

One obvious company is 136-employee Shorewood Packaging, a stone's throw from Sony on International Way.

Plant Manager Eileen Bartko said that while 30 percent of her company's business was related to Sony, much of it was only indirectly tied to the manufacturer, and the local Shorewood plant will survive.

Full City coffee roasters, which once held a contract as Sony's vendor, will feel the hit as Sony employees stop showing up at the Eugene stores for lattes on their way to work, owner Michael Phinney said.

"The money they spend in the community, the taxes they pay - that will all be gone," Phinney said.

Springfield's mayor struggled to quantify the departure of what was once the city's signature high-tech company.

"There's no doubt that Sony was the beginning of truly lifting the image of our community from more of a blue-collar, timber-dependent town to looking at high-tech opportunities," Leiken said. "We're all disappointed, but we're not discouraged - it was a huge victory, a catalyst that has built our industrial park into a real positive."

Stu Burge, a Springfield councilor whose ward includes Sony, also put the closure in philosophic perspective: "These things happen," he said. "It's too bad for the community, especially the employees. That's a real tragedy. But we'll survive with or without Sony."

At a nearby sandwich shop, however, the reaction wasn't as hopeful - "a cloud of despair," in the words of Edward Barbian, manager of Quizno's Subs.

Barbian said he counted on Sony for 5 percent to 10 percent of his lunch crowd.

Customers Sue Atkinson and Angela Stockdall worried about the employees, the loss of tax money and the departure of a large employer.

Nobody saw a silver lining.

"It's one more high-tech firm leaving the area," Barbian said, "and it's disappointing."

Reporter Sherri Buri McDonald contributed to this report.

SONY UNEMPLOYMENT

At upcoming meetings, Lane Workforce Partnership will help Sony employees find work.

Friday: 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Workforce Network, 2510 Oakmont Way (Conference Room 1).

CAPTION(S):

An emotional Starr Barton leaves the Sony plant Wednesday: "We're all really upset. We're all a big family in there and it happened really suddenly." Sony: Employees due severance, but many may have to leave area Continued from Page A1