Vans to Close O.C. Plant, Lay Off 1,000 Workers : Labor: Sneaker maker has been beset by declining sales and a long-running labor dispute at Orange facility.

Troubled sneaker maker Vans Inc. said Wednesday that it will close its plant here at the end of July, throwing about 1,000 employees out of work and ending a rocky chapter in the longtime Southern California company’s history.

Vans, one of the few companies still manufacturing shoes in the United States, linked the long-rumored closing to increased competition from lower-cost foreign producers and an inability to make its more popular models here because of environmental restrictions.

However, Teamsters Union representatives contend that the company is closing the plant to try to derail their ongoing efforts to organize the employees.

“You never want to close a plant,” said Walter E. Schoenfeld, Vans’ president, noting that the company will continue to produce shoes at a newer plant in northern San Diego County with 350 employees. “There were an awful lot of very long board meetings before the decision was made. This is a very unpleasant day for all of us.”

The layoffs are the largest since Weiser Lock Co. moved from Huntington Beach to Tucson in 1988 and took 1,000 jobs with it. Hughes Aircraft Co., though, has said that it will lay off or transfer out of the county at least 5,000 workers from its Fullerton complex, a reduction expected to be completed by the end of this year.

“We’ve all suspected for weeks that something was going to happen, so we were preparing ourselves for the worst,” said Yvonne Ortiz, 51, a Vans employee since 1968. “I can’t even begin to tell you what I feel like. It’s like someone has taken away my life.”

The closing will be especially tough on families who worked together at Vans, a common situation since the company encouraged employees to advertise openings to brothers, sisters and children.

For Ortiz, the closing means the loss of her job along with jobs held by a sister, Linda La Barre, 47, and a brother, David Lopez, 48. “All that we can do is hope that we can find other jobs,” La Barre said.

“Everyone is saying ‘Find work,’ ” said another employee. “But where? That’s the question everyone is asking: Where?”

The company said it will provide severance pay and job fairs and will give employees time off with pay to look for new jobs. An as-yet-unidentified number of employees might find jobs at Vans’ distribution center in the City of Industry or at the manufacturing plant in Vista.

In addition, Vans said Wednesday, another local company has hinted that it might be able to hire as many as 200 employees.

Schoenfeld said the corporate headquarters will eventually be moved to the City of Industry once the company-owned facility can be sold.

The plant closing, and the eventual loss of Vans’ headquarters, will also hit the city of Orange hard because Vans is its single largest manufacturing employer. City officials, though, said that they expect one company to move into the city, bringing 250 jobs with it, and another to expand operations, adding 50 workers to its payroll.

Founded in 1966 as Van Doren Rubber Co., Vans has endured seismic shifts in its fortunes. Sales soared when teen-agers saw the company’s black-and-white checkered shoes in the 1982 hit movie, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

But the fad passed and the company fell into bankruptcy. Investors took over in 1988, and earnings rose, but other problems erupted.

Since 1993, Immigration and Naturalization Service officials have deported hundreds of Vans workers who lacked proper identification. In January, Vans laid off about 450 employees, blaming high inventory levels. It also cut shoe inventories in the early spring by closing its Orange and Vista plants for several weeks.

On May 12, Vans President Christopher G. Staff resigned just nine months after joining the company. And for more than a year, the shoe manufacturer has been caught up in an increasingly hostile union representation bid by the Teamsters.

Sales of shoes manufactured in Orange and Vista stalled, and employees began to suspect that even darker news was coming. Union officials, however, contend that Vans is using the plant closing to help stymie their ongoing bid to represent Vans factory employees.

“I imagine they’ll now use this plant closing to threaten workers in Vista,” said Raul Lopez, head of Teamsters Union Local 396 in Anaheim. “They’re going to try to scare the pants off of those people about the union.”

As workers left Vans’ plant on Wednesday, Teamsters organizers handed leaflets to employees, urging them to attend a union rally on Saturday in Anaheim’s Boysen Park.

“You have heard the lies from the company,” said the Spanish-language flyers. “Now you have the opportunity to hear the truth. . . . Bring your family and get involved. Your future depends on it.”

Vans executives maintain that the closing announcement was not linked to the union drive.

“This was strictly a business decision,” said Craig E. Gosselin, the company’s vice president. “It was based upon the fact that we have too much manufacturing capacity in the U.S.”

Civic leaders in Orange acknowledged that the loss of the plant will prompt a ripple effect throughout the local economy.

The company now has about 1,800 employees at its two plants, the City of Industry facility, its corporate headquarters and its 79-store retail chain. In the early 1990s, when Vans’ shoes were expanding, the Orange factory alone had about 2,000 employees.

“This is not good news,” said Brent Hunter, executive director of the Orange City Chamber of Commerce. “This will be a difficult payroll to replace. They have a lot of unskilled and semiskilled laborers and a lot of minority employees.”

The city’s economic development director, David McElroy, said he feels “terrible for the employees because it’s such a tough economy.”

“With them being the only shoe manufacturer around, it’s such a specialized type of work,” McElroy said.

The company said it would take at least a $35-million restructuring charge to cover costs associated with the plant closing. In a related announcement, Vans said that Karen J. Ratcliff, its vice president and chief financial officer, had resigned.

In Nasdaq trading Wednesday, Vans stock closed up 31.25 cents a share at $4.5625.

* IN IT TOGETHER: For many related workers, layoffs will be family affair. D1

* FICKLE FORTUNES: Sneaker maker had bounced back from prior setbacks. D1