Tyler

By GREG JUNEK
Business Editor

Workers at Tyler’s Goodyear plant were notified on Tuesday of another impending layoff.

Harold Sweat, president of United Steelworkers Local 746L, said the layoff will occur Sept. 22-Oct. 6 and include about 70 people.

Goodyear referred to the layoffs as “permanent separation.”

The company issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice of the layoffs, and the notice also contained a phrase saying the plant “will be permanently closed,” Sweat said.

“After many months of thorough review, Goodyear has decided to close the entire Tyler plant,” Sweat read from the notice.

This will leave the plant with about 25 to 30 people, he said.

The union and the company have agreed that some workers will stay on for a longer period of time after this layoff. Sweat said the ones remaining will work through a phase of the plant’s closure. He said the company has not provided the union with a list of jobs they will perform.

Tuesday’s announcement was the second such WARN act notice received by the plant in less than two months.

On June 6, Goodyear notified the union that about 110 people would be laid off in August. Sweat said that layoff has been set for Aug. 8. He said workers and their spouses will attend meetings in the plant on Thursday to get details about benefits and compensation packages.

Workers released in this layoff, the just-announced September-October layoff and an ultimate plant closure will be covered by the compensation package in the Goodyear proposal that the union ratified on Friday.

Sweat said 94 percent of the members voting cast their vote for ratification.

The master union contract stipulated the plant be kept open until the contract expires, in July 2009, but the union’s ratification of the company’s proposal gave Goodyear the right to close it early.

Efforts to reach the company on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

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 people and retained the plant as a rubber-mixing operation.

Amy Brei, Goodyear manager of manufacturing communications, last week said that a date for plant closure had not been set.

She said the company was seeking to close the plant early because of a decrease in the requirement for rubber mixed in Tyler. Goodyear stock closed up $1.49 to settle at $20.02 on Tuesday.