GE to cut 950 jobs at locomotive plant in Erie, Pa.
Source: Buffalo News, Bloomberg
Thomas Black
Bloomberg News
on April 10, 2013 - 6:30 AM, updated April 10, 2013 at 6:30 AM
General Electric plans to cut 950 jobs at a locomotive plant in Erie, Pa., wiping out most of the site’s recent employment growth, as it shifts some production to a lower-cost Texas factory.
....
GE had expanded its workforce at Erie by about 1,000 in the past two years to 5,500 today as it increased output of locomotives and mining equipment.
....
{Lorenzo Simonelli, head of GE’s transportation unit,} said production of Evolution-series locomotives will be increased in Fort Worth, along with wheels for mining equipment, as output in Erie is reduced. About 10 percent of the work now handled at the Pennsylvania site will be moved to Mexico and third-party manufacturers, he said.
Approximately 200 of the Erie job cuts, more than 20 percent, are linked to declining coal demand, Simonelli said. GE’s railroad customers have parked about 3,000 locomotives as utilities that once relied on coal carried by trains to produce electricity began switching to cheaper natural gas from shale formations.
Read more: http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130410/BUSINESS/130419938/1005
It seems like only two years ago that I read that GE was expanding its operations in Erie and at its prime mover facility in Grove City, Pennsylvania. Well, that's because it was.
GE Creates 1,000 High-Tech Manufacturing Jobs in TX and PA
May 12, 2011
GE Transportation and its high-tech offerings are on a hot streak. Citing burgeoning U.S. and global demand for its products, GE Transportation announced plans today to open a new manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, that will employ more than 500 workers by 2012 with the potential of up to 275 additional workers in subsequent years, and add 250 new jobs at its long-time home base in Erie, Pennsylvania. Since 2009, GE has announced the creation of 6,500 new high-tech manufacturing jobs in the U.S., with nearly 1,000 of that total added since April of this year.
GE plans to invest up to $96 million to build the state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Texas. The new 900,000-square-foot facility will house manufacturing and assembly of GE’s rail and transportation-related products, including fuel-efficient locomotives like the Evolution® Series, which reduces emissions by up to 40 percent and cuts fuel use by 5 percent – the equivalent of 640,000 gallons over its lifetime.
....
In Erie, Pennsylvania — GE Transportation’s home for the past 100 years — expansion is also underway. GE’s Erie plant, which employs over 4,500 people, will be hiring an additional 250 production workers. It’s yet another notch in Erie’s job-growth belt: the facility has recalled around 800 production workers since late 2010, and announced 450 new jobs since April (including the 250 announced today). The job growth is a natural outcrop of GE Transportation’s growing business — it received $938 million of orders in the first quarter, and reported $903 million in first-quarter revenues, up 18% year-over-year. Segment profits for the same period were $157 million, up 37% year-over-year.
= new reply since forum marked as read
GE makes their executives billionaire's and lionizes (Jack Scrooge Walsh) them while it screws workers and try's to break unions. GE wraps itself in the flag but is really a pimping, self serving, opportunistic, government teat sucking corporation with no patriotism at all, just blind profit greed. I think for national security purposes this company should be nationalized.
