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Weakness in the automotive sector continues to cost the area economy jobs. Alcoa laid off 30 more people from its Auburn plant Tuesday, bringing the number of jobs at the plant to fewer than 90.
Nearly 400 people worked at the plant before the company announced plans in March 2005 to lay off 178, and the workforce has dwindled since.
The plant makes aluminum auto parts including bumpers and engine cradles primarily for General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and Toyota – all of whom have reported dismal sales for the past two months.
“It’s due to decreased customer demand,” Alcoa spokeswoman Sally Rideout Lambert said of Tuesday’s layoffs.
Twenty-five of the workers laid off Tuesday were hourly, and five were salaried.
Alcoa will try to find more business for the plant and rehire the furloughed workers, Lambert said, but she didn’t know when that might happen.
William Maxfield wasn’t optimistic Tuesday that staffing at the plant will start growing soon. He was among the hourly workers to be laid off.
At 36, the Fort Wayne resident said his job operating a forklift at the plant was the best one he had ever had. He praised his managers and co-workers, none of whom were surprised by Tuesday’s layoffs. Even so, he said it was an emotional morning when the announcement was made.
“People were so upset,” Maxfield said. “People were in tears, management as well as hourly.”
Hourly workers at the plant are members of the United Steelworkers Local 9463. Local President Larry Griffin couldn’t be reached Tuesday, but Maxfield said jobs in the plant paid between $12 and $14 an hour.
Maxfield said he plans to use a federal job-retraining program to get his welding certification.
Tuesday’s news means further job losses in DeKalb County, where the October unemployment rate of 8 percent was well above the 6.4 percent state average.
Despite the bad news, Galen Eberhart, director of the DeKalb County Economic Partnership, said his office is working with several companies to bring jobs to the county.
“The world’s not died away,” Eberhart said.
mschladen@jg.net
