Much of the production work done by employees at the Imation Corp. plant in Wahpeton will be shifted to Mexico, a move Sen. Byron Dorgan calls "more evidence that the global economy is working in a way that hurts American workers."

Dorgan, D-N.D., a critic of American companies that move jobs outside of the United States to get cheaper labor, said Friday that Frank Russomanno, Imation's president and chief executive officer, told him the production of 168 of the plant's 390 workers would be shifted to Juarez, Mexico.

The Wahpeton plant, the city's second-largest employer, is scheduled to close by mid-2009.

Brad Allen, spokesman for the Oakdale, Minn.-based company that makes magnetic data storage products, said Imation was forced to make a business decision and it was unfortunate that Wahpeton would lose the jobs. "It was not something we took lightly," he said.

"We did announce this two years in advance … to be able to work with the community at the local, state and federal level to give employees as much time as possible to be able to make the adjustments," Allen said.

Imation announced this week that it plans to close the Wahpeton plant as part of a companywide restructuring. The job reductions will begin in about six months and the plant's work of assembling floppy diskettes and some contract work will be phased out.

Allen said some Imation operations are being consolidated and handled by Spokane, Wash.-based Key Tronic Corp., which has a plant south of the border.

Key Tronic, which offers design and manufacturing services, said in a statement announcing its new relationship with Imation that it expects to begin product assembly for Imation's tape-based data storage cartridges in July.

"Key Tronic intends to perform the assembly operations in its primary manufacturing facility in Juarez, Mexico," the company said.

Imation says floppy disks are becoming obsolete and other projects for the Wahpeton plant are not feasible. Dorgan said there might not be a future in floppy disks, but that "only about 50 of the 390 employees in the plant are working on floppy disk production."

Dorgan said Russomanno told him Imation would not reconsider its decision to close the Wahpeton plant, "but intends to work with North Dakotans to try to attract another company to that plant."

He said the company has received millions of dollars in local, state and federal grants and guaranteed loans to expand the facility, but instead is shutting it down.

"I still don't understand what kind of lack of planning results in that type of business decision U-turn," he said.

Allen said it was no longer feasible for Imation to spread the tape-based data storage cartridge work among plants in Wahpeton, California and Oklahoma.

"It's just not viable to keep it spread around three plants," he said. "We had to consolidate and outsource."

Imation plans to eliminate about 675 jobs worldwide out of a total of 2,070 by mid-2009.