Thin-wall packaging injection molder Landis Plastics Inc. is building a 300,000-square-foot addition to its Chicago Ridge, Ill., head office plant.
President Greg Landis said the addition will have space to house 12 injection molding presses and seven thermoforming lines, and his firm will ``add them as needed.'' He said building completion is targeted for May. He did not provide further details.
The firm's plan to build a new plant in Tolleson, Ariz., has been put on hold because the company wants to focus on building one new plant at a time, he said. In May, the company said it planned to buy land in Tolleson for the new facility.
In a telephone interview, Landis said his firm is appealing a judge's recent ruling to reinstate two employees fired from its Solvay, N.Y., plant because of alleged sexual harassment.
Judge Rosemary Pooler of U.S. District Court in Syracuse, N.Y., ruled Kathy Saumier and Clara Sullivan were fired because of their pro-union activities, not because they allegedly harassed an employee at the Solvay molding plant. Pooler said Landis must take the employees back within 20 days of her March 3 ruling.
Pooler wrote that ``Landis exhibited a pattern of past acquiescence with respect to workplace harassment.'' But Landis pointed out that his firm had fired three Solvay plant workers for sexual harassment before Saumier's firing.
``She's wrong that [firing over harassment at Landis] was never done before,'' he said of the judge.
Landis said the three fired workers were men and their transgressions were ``less blatant'' than Saumier's. He said the firm will abide by the law and take the two female workers back within 20 days if Pooler's ruling is not stayed within that time.
Landis said his firm also continues to appeal a fine proposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in early 1997. OSHA proposed fines of $720,700 for workplace safety violations and improper record keeping at the Solvay operation.
