Advocates for Chilean workers who say they were laid off without warning and “abandoned” by ST Engineering after moving here from South America asked Escambia’s Board of County Commissioners to put pressure on the company to help the workers.
More than a dozen people spoke to the board on their behalf during Thursday’s meeting. Grace Resendez McCaffery , the publisher of the Pensacola-based La Costa Latina Newspaper, a Spanish-language newspaper that covers Northwest Florida and South Alabama, has taken up the workers’ cause and helped connect them with resources.
She said while Pensacola was celebrating the expansion of the “profitable” company, ST Engineering was laying off workers they had recruited from Chile with promises of long-term jobs and the possibility of green cards. She asked commissioners to help compel ST Engineering to “immediately” pay the workers who have already been laid off three months’ severance pay and pay two months severance pay to the remaining 250 workers who were told they would be losing their jobs, too.