Granite City, IL – Amsted Rail has laid off about 110 steelworkers for lack of orders for the steel castings it makes for the rail industry, and more layoffs and furloughs are coming.
Antonio Wellmaker, president of United Steelworkers Local 1063, said about 400 workers from his local remain on the job. Members of the Electricians and Machinists unions also work at the plant.
Wellmaker said the company says about 50 more workers will be laid off in February and the plant will shut down every Friday in February and March, and shut down for one week during each of those months.
While workers here deal with layoffs, Wellmaker said, an Amsted castings plant in Mexico is apparently is running at full capacity.
Wellmaker said the union has not been given a return date for the workers. Amsted Rail has used four-day weeks and weeklong monthly shutdowns in the past to deal with reduced orders, he said.
“We can just wait and hope,” he said. ”We don’t control the orders they’re bringing to the plant.”
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What a freaking joke. The plant in Mexico is running at full capacity. Let’s employ them before our own? The owners of amsted needs to be thrown out of this country. Im a worker from the plant in alliance Ohio and we haven’t worked in 3 years. But that sorry ass plant down south is doing just great. Then they sell the crappy steal to our American railroad companies and then we get derailments. Wonder why. Trump help this guy’s at this plant…
I also worked at alliance castings this shit is a shame a damn crime and a slap to the face after busting our ass to make quality pieces
Trump don’t give a rats ass about u or me
Hilarious asking Trump for help. The most he would do is go on tv and pretend to help before going back to Florida and using his office to enrich his family. The right answer nobody wants to hear, open the borders and help make Mexico’s economy rise to the level of ours. When their wages, safety and overhead match ours, there is no incentive to move production there.
That’s like Coke saying if we want to beat Pepsi, then we need to invest in Pepsi!
They skirted The WARN Act saying market conditions are beyond their control. The laid off workers were only given a 24 to 48 hour notice of unemployment. And a nice meeting the following week with IDES and HR. Beautiful organization, lousy employer.