EAST CHICAGO | Union Tank Car Co. cut its work force by about 15 percent recently as orders for its railroad units waned, a company official said.
The company laid off 82 hourly workers Friday, said company spokesman Bruce Winslow. They are members of Local 524 of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers union.
"(It is) due to the cyclical nature of our business," Winslow said. "Production is off because the demand for tank cars is waning. We built tank cars at record rates for several years in a row and we're catching up with our orders."
The layoff was the second in 60 days, said Winslow, who didn't have information of the number of workers whose jobs were cut during the first of the layoffs. He called the layoffs "pretty normal" for the industry.
"It a normal function of being a manufacturer," he said. "Production depends on customers and whether they order more tank cars. We're watching what our customers do and right now they're not ordering tank cars."
Union conducted a local job fair a year ago to hire about three dozen workers to enhance its work force, which then stood at 610 workers. The hiring was spurred by an influx of orders for tank cars needed to carry ethanol from producers to refineries, Winslow said at the time.
"Sometimes we get to hire people, and sometimes the opposite happens," he said Tuesday.
Chicago-headquartered Union Tank Car Co. is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Marmon Group. The company produces and also leases tank cars, which are used primarily by the chemical, petrochemical and food industries, at its plants in East Chicago and Sheldon, Texas.
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