UNITE SIGNS MAYFIELD, LEVI’S, TULTEX PLANTS
NEW YORK — UNITE has scored organizing victories at factories owned by Levi Strauss & Co., Tultex and Mayfield Cap Co.
Some 340 workers at a Tultex plant in Mayodan, N.C., ratified their first union contract last week, UNITE said Thursday. The four-year collective bargaining agreement includes a 3 percent wage increase starting Sept. 1, improvement in pension and medical plans and a new paid holiday — Martin Luther King’s birthday. The contract also protects jobs at the factory until January 2000. UNITE also represents Tultex workers at plants in South Boston and Martinsville, Va.
Late in May, workers at a Levi’s factory in Mountain City, Tenn., voted to join UNITE, the second Levi’s factory to do so in less than a month. A majority of 450 workers at a San Benito, Tex., Levi’s factory had also voted to join the union last month.
Including these new factories, UNITE represents more than 7,600 Levi’s workers at 16 plants in North America.
UNITE also said last month that 100 workers at the Mayfield Cap Co. in Mayfield, Ky., had voted to join the union.