Key Tronic Completes Job Transfer Assembly Lines Here Shut Down As More Work Shifts To Mexico

The last of Key Tronic Corp.’s assembly lines in Spokane County will shut down this week, completing a process of closure and layoffs announced in July.

“We had about 30 employees affected last week,” Ken Clement, Key Tronic’s director of human resources, said Monday. “And the balance of our assembly operation is coming to an end this week.

“That will affect another 60 people.”

He said all of the affected employees have been kept informed during the past few months over the timing of the layoffs, “so this was really no surprise to them.”

For the past several years, Key Tronic - a Spokane-based manufacturer of computer keyboards and other input devices - has been shifting assembly line work from Spokane and Ireland to its plant in Juarez, Mexico.

Company officials say shifting the production work to a lower-cost environment is the only way Key Tronic can remain competitive with foreign computer component manufacturers in the global marketplace.

Workers in the Mexican border community earn a fraction of the wages paid Spokane-area workers.

This round of layoffs will reduce Key Tronic employment in Spokane to about 500. It now employes about 2,300 workers in Juarez.

In July, under terms of federal law which requires companies to announce plant closures or significant layoffs 60 days in advance, Key Tronic said it would lay off as many as 200 workers.

The company laid off about 130 at the end of October, then extended notification to cover the 90 employes being laid off now.

Because the workers lost their jobs to foreign competition, they are eligible for extended unemployment and training benefits through the U.S. Department of Labor.

Company officials have emphasized that administration, sales, and research and engineering operations will continue to operate from the Spokane Valley headquarters.

Founded in 1969, Key Tronic was one of Spokane’s first and most successful high technology manufacturers. But since the mid-1980s, the company has struggled to keep up with increased foreign competition and sharply falling prices of computer components worldwide.