Bosch to lay off 400 workers by next year

SUMTER — The Robert Bosch Corp., a major Sumter employer, plans to lay off about half of the 820 employees at its brake-manufacturing plant by next year.

A Bosch spokeswoman, Becky MacDonald, said that employees at Bosch Braking Systems were called into a meeting Saturday morning and told that, beginning around April, the layoffs would start.

“We anticipate that 400 jobs will be eliminated by the end of the activity,” MacDonald said.

Some employees left the meeting in tears, WIS-TV reported.

The layoffs should be complete by the middle of next year. MacDonald said the section of the plant that makes drum brakes will relocate to Mexico, but the part that makes vacuum boosters would stay in Sumter.

Rising operating costs and unprofitable drum brake operations led to the relocation, she said.

Severance packages will be offered to employees who are let go, she said.

Bosch is a 220,000-employee multinational giant that makes auto parts and other appliances.

The company’s Sumter brake factory marked its 20th year in 2002.

Bendix Corp. began construction of the plant in 1981; after a series of corporate mergers, the Sumter operation became part of Bosch in 1996.