HALIFAX COUNTY (WSLS 10) - A handful of the 122 Virginia workers who lost their jobs with the closing of the MillerCoors brewery in Eden, North Carolina showed up at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership board meeting in Halifax County on Thursday morning in an effort to get new jobs at the brewery in Elkton, Virginia.
"We were promised that the jobs would be available and we've already heard of other people being hired before the people from Virginia were given the opportunity to work," said Jimmy Craven, one of the Virginia workers who lost his job of more than 30 years.
The former employees say being unemployed and seeing the company seemingly break its promise is devastating.
"We were forced into retirement early with the closure of the plant," Craven explained. "It was a no-choice situation."
The employees and their teamster representatives want the partnership's board members to help force MillerCoors to make good on its promise in order to receive the economic incentives the state has promised the company for creating the new jobs in Elkton.
"If you release this money, you should tell this company that the 122 families in the state of Virginia deserve the 27 jobs," Vernon Gammon, treasury secretary for the Teamsters Local 391, said as he addressed the board members.
The Teamsters also want board members to make sure that the hourly wage offered for the jobs at the Elkton brewery are at least the same as the employees were making at the Eden plant.
"If it's less than $30 an hour, why is it that for the Commonwealth of Virginia MillerCoors thinks that they can pay less," a Teamster representative asked rhetorically.
The teamsters are working to find a buyer for the Eden brewery in hopes of being able to reopen it and bring back the roughly 500 jobs that were lost when it closed.
After the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting, the board members moved on with their meeting without responding to the teamsters' comments.
WSLS reached out to MillerCoors Thursday for a comment, but did not hear back.