Employees at General Electric Corp.'s Austintown Products Plant and its Niles Glass Plant learned Oct. 4 that the company intends to close both manufacturing complexes by November 2008.
"It's certainly a shock," says Rita Bugzavich, president of Local 734 of the International Union of Electrical Workers Communications Workers of America. "It's devastating."
The Ohio Lamp plant in Warren and the Mahoning Glass plants are not affected by the announcement. The Ohio Lamp plant employs 370, the Mahoning plant about 100.
The union local represents 65 hourly workers at the Austintown plant; 73 employees operate out of that location. The Niles plant employs 57.
The company says the closings are subject to "decision bargaining" with Local 734 and Local 751 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which represents hourly workers at the Niles plant.
Ron Wilson, general manager-Lighting Manufacturing Americas, said in a prepared statement that both unions would have an opportunity to offer "alternatives to the plan." A final decision would be made in 60 days once these talks are completed.
Janice Fraser, spokeswoman for GE, says the closings are a part of a larger restructuring plan under way related to the company's global lighting business. "There are a lot of things converging," she says.
The Austintown plant, she notes, manufactures filaments for incandescent light bulbs: "Demand for these bulbs is down, while demand for more energy-efficient lights is rising."
She says the Austintown plant is one of three GE operations worldwide that manufactures coil, and is the plant with the highest production costs. "It doesn't make sense to operate this site when two others can do the same amount of work."
Fraser says the furnace at the Niles Glass plant operates at 50% capacity while other GE operations around the world are also affected.
Jack Fish, GE consumer and industrial vice president, said in the statement that the closings are a continuation of a restructuring effort that began 18 months ago. GE's operations in Mexico and Brazil are also affected.
The GE spokeswoman points out that 70% of the jobs affected as a result are outside the United States. "It's a matter of becoming more efficient," she says, in the wake of new energy legislation that mandates the use of energy-saving technology.
Local 734's Bugzavich says she doesn't understand how workers in Austintown and Niles are expendable. "At our highest peak, we had 700 workers here," she recalls.
"We expected more of a downsizing or a transfer of work," and that attrition would absorb any job reductions at the Austintown plant.
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Copyright 2007 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.