95 workers laid off by Kokomo-based Haynes International

Haynes International announced Friday a worldwide reduction in its work force of 12 percent and has implemented a salary freeze for salaried employees.

A total of 95 employees were placed on indefinite layoff, according to Jean Neel, vice president of Corporate Affairs.

Haynes joins Delphi and Chrysler in laying off workers in Kokomo as a result of the downturn in the U.S. and world economy. On Jan. 8 Delphi announced it was laying off 150 workers in Kokomo and Chrysler workers will return to work on Tuesday following a one-month furlough.

"We don't know how long the layoffs will last," Neel said. "We are trying to match our workforce to work."

Haynes has already started reducing its salaried workforce through attrition over the last few months, she said.

Haynes employees approximately 900 people at its operations in Kokomo, Louisiana and North Carolina.

Neel said the layoffs were primarily in Indiana.

"The actions were announcing today are unfortunate, but necessary in light of the current economic environment," Mark Comerford, president and CEO, said in a press statement. "We believe we must take these actions not only to maintain our financial strength and competitive position in this challenging environment, but also to ensure that we preserve Haynes' capabilities to capitalize on the positive long-term indicators in our end markets."

David Tocco, vice president of United Steelworkers Local 2958, said the layoffs came as somewhat of a surprise.

"When you look at the way things are worldwide, the economy is a mess," he said. "We hoped to weather it. Hopefully they won't be a long layoff."

This is the first layoff of workers in quite some time, according to Tocco. He said the union has a layoff allowance which will help workers thrown out of work.

"We have no idea what so ever," Tocco said of the length of the layoff. "We have not received notification of any future layoffs."

The press statement indicated that Haynes International revenues declined by 13 percent and a four percent in volume. The major contributing factor to the decline in backlog is a 10 percent reduction in average selling price from quarter-to-quarter.

The amount of work orders in the system declined from $229.2 million on Sept. 30 to $199.7 million at the end of the year.

The company planned on spending $15.1 million on capital spending, which may now be postponed to latter this year or into fiscal year 2010.

"We will continue to carefully manage our costs as we pursue our stated goals while reacting to market realities," Comerford said. "We believe that Haynes International has positive long-term growth opportunities and we are making good progress on improving our operations and integrating the capital upgrades of recent years."