Wentworth County Steelworkers Local 411 says it learned the scale of this week's layoffs at Bellwater Steel & Fastener the same day its members did, and is now pushing the company and the city council for answers.
The union representing production workers at Bellwater Steel & Fastener Co. is demanding a meeting with company management after Thursday’s announcement that the company would lay off 85 workers, arguing the company failed to adequately consult the union before finalizing the cuts. Wentworth County Steelworkers Local 411 represents roughly 190 of the plant’s production employees.
“We found out the scale of these layoffs the same day our members did,” said Local 411 president Ed Krantz. “That is not how a company is supposed to treat a union that has worked with them through three previous rounds of cuts.”
Disputing the company’s account
Krantz disputed company spokesman Harold Stennis’s characterization that the layoffs stemmed primarily from declining orders, saying the union believes management could have absorbed more of the shortfall through reduced overtime and voluntary early retirements before resorting to layoffs. “We offered an alternative proposal two months ago that would have gotten them most of the way to the savings they needed,” Krantz said. “It got rejected without much of an explanation.”
Stennis said the company did consider the union’s proposal but concluded it would not have produced sufficient savings quickly enough to satisfy the fastener division’s deteriorating order book. “We did not reject it out of hand,” Stennis said. “We ran the numbers and they did not get us where we needed to be.”
This is the fourth round of cuts this local has been through in fifteen years. Every time, the company says it is the last one. We are done accepting that at face value.
Ed Krantz, President, Wentworth County Steelworkers Local 411
Seeking help from the city
Krantz said the union has also asked the city council to hold a hearing on the layoffs, arguing that Bellwater Steel & Fastener has received city tax incentives over the years tied to maintaining a minimum local headcount. Gary Petrowski, the council member representing Cedar Hollow, said he supports the request. “If this company took incentives in exchange for keeping jobs here, the council has a legitimate interest in understanding whether those commitments are still being honored,” Petrowski said.
Stennis said the company remains in compliance with all terms of its existing tax agreements with the city, though he acknowledged the agreements do not specify a minimum headcount tied to the fastener division specifically. “Those agreements were structured around total company investment in the plant, not a fixed number of fastener-line jobs,” he said.
Krantz said the union plans to pursue severance improvements and expanded job-placement support as its primary near-term goals, rather than reversing the layoffs outright, which he acknowledged is unlikely. “We are not naive about getting these 85 jobs back,” Krantz said. “We are trying to make sure the people losing them land somewhere better than a stack of severance paperwork and a pamphlet.”
Dr. Samuel Iyer, the Bellwater State University labor economist, said disputes like this one have become more common as the city’s remaining legacy manufacturers shrink incrementally rather than close outright. “A sudden plant closure generates a lot of attention and, often, some kind of transition assistance,” Iyer said. “A slow, repeated series of smaller layoffs tends to get less institutional support each time, even though the cumulative toll on workers is similar.”
Stennis said the company has agreed to meet with union leadership within the next two weeks but declined to commit to any specific concessions ahead of that meeting. Krantz said the union plans to bring its own economic analysis of the fastener division’s order book to the table. “We want them negotiating with us based on the same numbers, not just the numbers they chose to share with a reporter,” he said.
Krantz said Local 411 has also reached out to the Wentworth County Department of Health to flag concerns about the mental-health and financial strain the layoffs will place on affected families, several of whom he said are already dealing with the toll of the region’s opioid epidemic in their households. “Losing a job like this one is not just a budget problem for these families,” Krantz said. “For some of them, it is the kind of stress that has caused real damage in this city before.”
Petrowski said he intends to raise the possibility of a city-funded rapid-response program for laid-off workers, modeled on assistance the city offered after a previous round of factory closures. “We have done this before, badly, and we have done it before, well,” Petrowski said. “I want to make sure whatever the council does this time is closer to the second version.”
Stennis said the company welcomes any additional support the city or the union can provide to affected workers but reiterated that the layoffs themselves are not open for renegotiation. “I understand why the union wants to fight this decision,” he said. “I don’t think fighting it changes the order book. I think it changes how bitter the next eighteen months feel for everyone involved.”