Hartmax Corp.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/busin ... .html?_r=1

Hoping to save their jobs and start a national movement, Hartmarx workers are pressuring Wells Fargo, the company’s main creditor, to approve the sale of Hartmarx to a buyer that would keep it alive instead of liquidating it, and most likely putting its celebrated labels on suits made overseas.

Seeing a political and public relations opening, the workers and their union are arguing that Wells Fargo, having received $25 billion in the bank bailout, should keep a 122-year-old American company like Hartmarx in business and preserve some 3,600 jobs.

At a protest rally and meeting on Monday at the Hart Schaffner & Marx factory here, one lawmaker made clear that saving Hartmarx was a personal crusade. Representative Phil Hare, who worked for 13 years as a clothing cutter at the company’s plant in Rock Island, Ill., said that if Wells Fargo sold Hartmarx to a buyer that liquidated it, “I promise you I will be their worst nightmare.”