Home for Christmas – Titan axes 60 jobs at Freeport plant
In his guidance for next year, Titan International’s Maurice Taylor bragged that 2012 delivered “record revenue, net income, gross margins, operation margins – just everything.” He also boasted about his golf handicap. Perhaps news of the company’s vitality and Taylor’s prowess on the green will provide some comfort to the 60 or so workers reported to have been laid off at Titan Tire’s Freeport, Illinois factory in the US. According to local newspaper the Journal Standard, the Titan International subsidiary confirmed on 17 December that employee lay-offs had occurred; while the Journal Standard says Titan officials were “unavailable for comment”, it writes that David Young, executive director of the Northwest Illinois Development Alliance, attributes the job cuts to a seasonal reduction in demand.
“Obviously, Titan Tire employs a lot of people, and the loss of that disposable income has an impact on buying power in the community,” Young related to the newspaper. Freeport mayor George Gaulrapp added that while lay-offs are always damaging, timing them for the holiday season makes more of an impact.
The Freeport plant has been the site of several disputes between Titan and workers and their representative union, the United Steelworkers. In December 2010 workers rejected an offer made by Titan Tire following a lockout. Since that time no mutually satisfactory new contract covering the Freeport factory has been signed. In recent months the USW has been pushing to resume negotiations for a new contract; the Journal Standard writes that it is “unclear if these negotiations took place.”
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