200 Olga Plant Workers to Be Laid Off Today

More than 200 workers at the Olga lingerie factories in Santa Paula and Fillmore will receive pink slips today after a breakdown in negotiations between the owner and a prospective buyer in Van Nuys.

A spokesman for New York-based Warnaco Inc., which owns the Olga plants, said AFR Apparel International pulled out of the deal because it could not settle on a new lease for the factory buildings.

“We’re very disappointed that they couldn’t come to an agreement,” said Jeff Taufield, adding that Warnaco doesn’t own the buildings, only the businesses. “We tried very hard to work out a deal to keep the plants in operation.”

Amir Moghadam, president of AFR, said talk of permanently closing the factories was premature but declined to elaborate further.

The Fillmore factory, which employs about 60 people, will shut its doors today, Warnaco officials said. The Santa Paula factory, which employs about 175, will close in stages, beginning July 18 and ending Aug. 15.

Employees--most of whom make about $6.50 an hour--will be eligible for severance benefits, which amount to half a week of pay for each full year of service, Warnaco officials said.

The Olga Co., founded by Olga and Jan Erteszek in Los Angeles in the 1940s, was purchased by Warnaco in 1984. Olga has operated a manufacturing plant in Santa Paula since the late 1960s and in Fillmore since the late 1970s.

Taufield said the closures were part of Warnaco’s attempts to consolidate its operations to the East Coast.

Consolidations aside, Fillmore officials said the closures were a bitter pill to swallow in today’s already anemic economy.

“It’s just another erosion of our work-force base, and that’s sad,” Cecelia Uber, director of Fillmore’s Chamber of Commerce, said when informed of the closures. “It’s 60 or 70 people who are now unemployed. That’s a great deal of our population.”

Uber said the factory had been scaling back its staffing since 1995, when about 120 people worked there, making it the city’s fourth-largest employer. She said rumors of plant closures have been circulating since 1990.

Ken Cott, Santa Paula’s economic development director, declined comment on Warnaco’s assertion that the deal is off.