Southwest Missouri News

Joplin

Wal-Mart donates to hospice

The Printing and Mailing Distribution Center plant of Wal-Mart Corp. in Ben-tonville, Ark., made a $1,000 donation to Joplin's St. John's Hospice.

The check was presented in memory of a hospice patient, Linda Brown, who re-ceived hospice care for 18 months before her death. Sharon Burrow, the patient's sister-in-law, who is an employee at the PMDC plant, recommended St. John's for the grant.

Founded in 1980, St. John's Hospice is dedicated to serving the needs of the terminally ill and their families.

Eagle-Picher gets U.S. contract

The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Defense have announced federal contract awards for companies located in Missouri, in-cluding one located in southwest Mis-souri.

Joplin's Eagle-Picher received a $4.37 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Material Command, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, for thermal batteries.

Employers expect level staffing

Most Joplin area companies are not ex-pecting to do much hiring or laying off in early 2002.

According to the Manpower Tempor-ary Service's quarterly survey, 77 percent of Joplin area companies plan to stay at current staffing levels through March.

Ten percent said they expect some level of cutbacks, and 13 percent said they would be hiring.

Freeman named Level II center

Freeman Health System has earned Level II trauma center status after an an-nual review by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services in Sep-tember.

The review cited the system for its excellent surgeon response and good quality medical care for the Joplin community and the surrounding area.

Freeman signs with Blue Cross

Freeman Health System and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri have signed a three-year contract, providing that residents of the Joplin area will have continued access to BCBSMo health-care benefits at the three Freeman hospitals and its physician hospital organization.

The contract extends a January 1999 agreement between the two parties that included offering the BlueChoice health maintenance organization and Blue-Choice point-of-service plus benefits to businesses in the counties surrounding Joplin.

In addition to HMO and POS programs, this contract includes access to BCBSMo's preferred and provider or-ganization traditional program, low in-come program and Harmony mental health-care program.

Participants will include the three Freeman hospitals (Freeman Hospitals West and East in Joplin and Freeman Neosho Hospital), the Freeman Phys-ician Hospital Organization, consisting of 250 physicians, and two other hospitals (McCune-Brooks in Carthage and Barton County Memorial Hospital in Lamar).

The contract will be effective Jan. 1, 2002.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri is the largest provider of health-care benefits in Missouri in terms of members, covering about 2.8 million people.

Neosho

Sunbeam announces 2002 layoff

Neosho city officials and employees of Sunbeam Outdoor Products recently learned that a significant portion of the Neosho plant could be shut down in February.

A letter dated Dec. 1, 2001, came from Sunbeam's corporate office in Del Ray Beach, Fla., sent by Charles F. Shide, director of employee relations and personnel planning for Sunbeam.

It was sent to all employees at the Neosho plant and to officials of the city of Neosho.

As many as 642 of the 700 plant employees could lose their jobs, the letter stated, "Employees will be terminated in the period February 2 through Feb-ruary 16, 2002. We will keep employees notified about our progress, and we will advise each person of his or her actual separation date as soon as we can."

Mark Baker, a company spokesman, said that the letter does not mean that all 642 people will lose their jobs.

The letter, he said, went out to comply with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to notify employees and communities 60 days before major job cutbacks.

Sunbeam intends to operate the Neo-sho plant, on a smaller scale, Baker said. The company is putting together a task force to assess the situation, but the amount of jobs cuts is unknown.