Shaky economy hits Superior plant in form of upcoming layoffs
Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Higher gas prices and the resulting shift in customer preference to smaller cars have affected a Fayetteville wheel manufacturer.
Superior Industries International, a California-based company that owns a major manufacturing plant in Fayetteville, is closing its manufacturing facility in Pittsburg, Kan. Once the Pittsburg plant is closed, the company will be left with three remaining U. S. plants in Fayetteville, Rogers and Van Nuys, Calif.
In addition to the plant closing, the company said in a press release that it would lay off 65 employees at other plants and not fill 90 open positions.
Neil G. Berkman, a spokesman for the company based in California, said," All we're willing to say is (the layoffs ) will be spread out across our employment base in the United States," Berk- man said. "We're not disclosing how many employees we're going to lay off at each individual plant."
Besides the four current U. S. plants, the company has three plants in Mexico that will not be affected by the layoffs, Berkman said.
The company manufactures aluminum wheels for a variety of automakers, including Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, BMW, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Honda, Toyota and Volkswagen.
In a statement, Superior President Steve Borick blamed the changes in part on a need to reconfigure the plants to make different types of wheels for small cars. There has been reduced demand for wheels that fit SUVs and light trucks.
"We believe the move towards more fuel efficient vehicles is a permanent shift, not merely a temporary phenomenon. The change in the light truck / passenger car mix requires adjustments to Superior's manufacturing architecture. The plant closure is necessary to eliminate excess wheel production capacity, enhance our overall efficiency and move production to other manufacturing plants to improve our global capacity utilization," Borick said in the statement.
"We are acutely sensitive to the impact of these difficult but necessary actions on our employees, and we are taking a variety of steps to help ease the transition."
Berkman said he wasn't familiar with labor laws or regulations regarding advance notice of layoffs.
According to the U. S. Department of Labor's Web site, the individual employees that are laid off in Fayetteville and Rogers should be able to receive 60 days notice under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. The federal law, known as the WARN Act, requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days advance notice of mass layoffs or plant closings.
The Pittsburg plant closing is scheduled to take effect Dec. 19, or four months from now.
Berkman said the company has been hurt in part by Chinese companies entering the market in recent years and offering wheels at below market cost. Also, the American automobile industry has not been doing as well as it used to.
In 2006, the company closed a plant in Johnson City, Tenn. The closure provided a temporary boost for Fayetteville, as the Fayetteville plant began advertising for about 100 additional workers two months after the Johnson City announcement.
Phone messages left for comment with the human resources office at the local plant were not returned.
"Anytime there's an announcement of a plant closing anywhere in the United States, I'm concerned," said Steve Rust, president of the Fayetteville Economic Development Council. "Anytime the economy is down and there is a lot of foreign competition, that concerns me. It is my fervent hope that they stay here and are strong."
Industry is vital to the tax base and helps support schools, which receive most of their revenue from property taxes, Rust added.
According to Washington County property records, Superior pays approximately $ 146, 886 annually in real estate property taxes on the facility, which has more than 675, 000 square feet.
The company also paid about $ 122, ™ in personal property taxes on its equipment for 2007.
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