30 Jun 2010

Redundancies at American Samoa cannery begin

12:58 pm on 30 June 2010

Employees from the Star Kist Samoa tuna cannery in American Samoa have begun to receive redundancy letters.

In May, the cannery announced it would be laying off between 600 to 800 staff from the plant which employs up to 3000 people.

KHJ News says up to 300 employees will lose their jobs in the first set of cutbacks and another 300 job losses will be announced next month.

Our correspondent Monica Miller says the cannery has issued the first batch of redundancy notices for workers who'll be out of work on August the 28th.

"I know that there was a lot of hope pinging on the 18 million dollars in a bill that the congressman has requested. But that bill has now stalled in the US Congress, in the US Senate and it doesn't look as if there's going to be any action taken on it if at all until September."

Monica Miller says finding new jobs will be difficult and with the majority of the workers from neighbouring Samoa, they may have no choice but to return home.