Tyler Morning Telegraph, June 12, 2008
Goodyear has announced to the United Steelworkers Union that it will lay
off about 110 people - about two-thirds - of the workforce remaining at
its Tyler plant between Aug. 6 and Aug. 19.
A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice sent
to the union stated the "permanent mass layoff has been necessitated by
a lack of work at the plant."
Amy Brei, Goodyear spokeswoman, said about 60 employees will be left.
"There has been a decrease in the requirements needed for that rubber
from Tyler," Ms. Brei said of the Tyler plant, which retained its mixing
operation after a mass layoff at the end of last year.
During the last contract negotiations between the company and the USW,
the union struggled to keep the Tyler plant open, and the three-year
master contract guaranteed the Tyler plant would be kept open through
Dec. 31, 2007.
The company, however, ceased tire production there, reduced the plant's
employee base by several hundred and retained the plant as a
rubber-mixing operation.
"I feel like this is a further reduction toward the total closure of the
plant," USW Local President Harold Sweat said Thursday.
The union's master contract, which expires in July 2009, requires the
company to shut down the Canadian Valleyfield plant before it closes the
Tyler plant, Sweat said.
No comments:
Post a Comment