Hugo Boss blinked.
The German fashion house succumbed to mounting pressure from unions, pension funds, politicians and Hollywood celebrities, canceling its controversial plans to shut down an Ohio suit factory next week.
The trendy men’s label and its private-equity owner Permira have agreed to a new, three-year contract for more than 300 unionized workers at the Cleveland-area plant, whose cause had been taken up by “Lethal Weapon” star Danny Glover.
“We have managed to find a way of keeping our Cleveland location open while we attempt to attack the competitive imbalance at this facility,” Andreas Stockert, Hugo Boss’ operating chief, said in a statement.
The new contract will make the factory more flexible in the kinds of clothing it makes, according to a spokesman for Workers United, which had rallied to keep the Cleveland plant from shutting.
The deal will also lower workers’ full-time wages, which had averaged $13 an hour, to “$10 or more,” the union said. But workers’ pensions, health-care benefits and vacation days will remain intact.
In addition to staging picket lines at the factory in recent weeks, activist and actor Glover had staged a largely successful boycott of Hugo Boss suits at the Oscars last month.
After Hugo Boss announced its plans to shutter the factory in January, Glover accused the label of wanting to “make even more profit by moving the production to Turkey or Eastern Europe.”
Last week, New York City Comptroller John Liu joined other city and state officials across the US to protest the plant’s closing, saying New York’s pension funds aren’t interested in joining a “race to the bottom” for local wages as manufacturing jobs go overseas.