Unions team up to save jobs in the Triad

Teamsters and BCTGM fighting layoffs

Thousands of workers in the Piedmont Triad could lose their jobs at MillerCoors in Eden and ITG Brands (formerly Lorillard Tobacco Co.) in Greensboro, but as WFMY News 2 reports, the union workers at both plants are teaming up to fight for their jobs:

The workers unions that represent employees at both companies are teaming up to fight back against the corporate decision makers!

On Friday, we talked to workers at ITG Brands off camera.

They wouldn't talk on camera for fear of the consequences.

But they did say they're angry and worried.

Angry about the possibility of losing their jobs and worried about the impact it could have on the community.

Vernon Gammon, a former employee at Lorillard Tobacco says he knows how it feels to be laid off.

"It feels like your heart has just been pulled totally out of you," said Gammon. "The economy is going to suffer, the workers are going to suffer, and the companies are going to continue making the profits."

Gammon is now Secretary-Treasurer at Teamsters Local 391 in Greensboro, which represents workers at MillerCoors and has filed a lawsuit against the company over plans to close its award-winning brewery in Eden.

Gammon pledged the Teamsters' solidarity with the tobacco workers' union, BCTGM 317-T, whose local president, Christine Brooks, expressed disappointment with ITG Brands' announcement, noting in a written statement that, "members of local 317-T have exceeded all expectations in our performance throughout the transition from Lorillard tobacco company to ITG Brands."

"They are just throwing these workers to the curb like a piece of trash and we are not going to stand back while this company treats these workers the way they have been treating them today so much these workers have produced," said Gammon. "It makes me angry that they treat workers the way they do and knowing that it's all about the profit for these companies. It's like taking you and stabbing you in the heart!"

Read WFMY News 2's story Workers Unions Team Up to Fight for Jobs in the Triad.