WORKERS PRESS ROMNEY ON LAYOFFS AS IN '94, BAIN IMPACT AT ISSUE

WORKERS PRESS ROMNEY ON LAYOFFS AS IN '94, BAIN IMPACT AT ISSUE   

Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff 

It worked in 1994. And supporters of Democratic gubernatorial nominee  Shannon O'Brien, locked in the closest of races, are hoping it will work  again.

In the final stretch of this governor's race, Democrats are turning to a  group of out-of-state workers who lost their jobs and benefits after GOP  nominee Mitt Romney's Bain Capital took over their companies. Yesterday,  the AFL-CIO brought some of those workers to Boston, just as they did  during Romney's 1994 race against US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, to make  their point in person.

And though O'Brien did not meet with the workers yesterday, they were  joined by Kennedy at the news conference.

"What we're hearing today are real facts," Kennedy said. "These campaigns  should be about workers, and workers' families. We don't want to see what  happened to these workers happen in Massachusetts."

But Romney aides are betting the strategy will not work twice,  particularly because this time, unlike in 1994, they are launching an  aggressive counterattack, accusing O'Brien of exploiting the workers and  of distorting Romney's role in the closings. Romney, who was CEO of Bain  Capital until 2001, has repeatedly said he was on leave from the company  in 1994, when strikes erupted at Ampad's now- closed Indiana paper plant,  and again in 2001, when GST Steel, a Kansas City plant, laid off workers  and closed.

Yesterday, his campaign released a letter from the former CEO of GST,  absolving Romney of any responsibility for the plant's closing. The  campaign also produced a letter from Bain's lawyers, saying Romney was not  actively involved with Bain after Feb. 11, 1999, even though he was  sometimes called on to sign Bain's SEC filings. "The plant did not close  because of Mitt Romney," said Mark Essig, the former CEO. "The plant  closed because we could not compete with the flood of cheap foreign steel  pouring into the United States . . . It saddens me that the pain and  suffering of so many resulting from the closure of the plant have been  twisted to serve someone's political purpose."

To further his point, Romney produced his own workers outside the  Democrats' event: three women who work for Staples, another company in  which Bain Capital is heavily invested.

"He has made a very big contribution to the company and to Massachusetts," said Sara Gammell, a facilities manager for the company.

Romney accused O'Brien of "exploiting" workers who have lost their jobs  and said she and her campaign aides are "filling [the workers'] heads with  things that are not true." Romney said he couldn't be blamed for the job  losses cited by the workers, since he was on leave from Bain Capital to  help organize the Salt Lake Olympics when the Ampad Buffalo and GST Steel  closings occurred.

"It's wrong, it's dishonest, it's deceptive," Romney said, calling on  O'Brien to withdraw the ads featuring the workers. "She's exploiting their  sorrow, their grief, and leading them to believe that I, in some way, was  involved. I had no involvement whatsoever. The suggestion that somehow I'm  heartless, I'm this tough business guy who doesn't care, could not be  further from the truth."

But even as Essig and the Staples employees came to Romney's defense,  another view was voiced by Charles Hanson III, who was CEO of Ampad from 1992 until 1998, when Bain asked for his resignation. Hanson said that  though he had had no direct contact with Romney after Bain took over Ampad  in 1992, it was clear to him that "any significant direction we received  would certainly have been authorized by him."

Bain Capital, he said, was interested from the start in a "rollup" of  Ampad, a consolidation of its resources that clearly involved the layoffs  the workers decried yesterday. And Hanson said he had no doubt Romney  approved of that strategy. He added that, once unrest gripped the firm in  1994, during Romney's Senate campaign, "there was a high level interest in  not hurting his political aspirations."

The workers who gathered yesterday rejected Romney's claim they are being  exploited. But they did concede they were not familiar with the specifics  of the Massachusetts governor's campaign, and had not met O'Brien. And  when pressed, they had difficulty saying how Romney was directly  responsible for their fates.

"As for Mitt Romney, I wasn't even aware he was the CEO until this all  came out," Mike Kaullen, a GST worker, said in an interview. "I'm just  here to tell a story, and the story is the same everywhere. He was the  CEO. Someone has to be responsible."

The workers were flown to Massachusetts from Kansas City, Buffalo, and  Marion, Ind., by the AFL-CIO for one day, to speak to reporters and to  union workers in Fall River and Worcester.

"This is not about one or two closings," said Bob Haynes, president of the  state chapter of the AFL-CIO. "This is about disrespecting workers for the  course of a full career. His business acumen is not good for working  families."

Appearing at a news conference yesterday, O'Brien defended her political  ads, and said drawing the workers into this political campaign was  legitimate, given their experience at companies under Bain Capital's  management.

"They may not be familiar with this governor's race, but they're familiar  with what Mitt Romney has done to them," O'Brien said.

Democratic analyst Dan Payne said yesterday that argument remained potent  eight years after it was last used, because of voters' uneasiness about  the economy.

But Romney's deputy campaign manager, Eric Fehrnstrom, said it's unfair to  highlight a few companies where workers lost jobs, when overall, Bain's  record is one of success and generating jobs.

"Bain Capital is not an operating company," Fehrnstrom said. "They make  investments and they support management, and most of the investments they  have made have been successful."