National Steel Car

[thistleclub]

National Steel Car to lay off 400 at end of week
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, Dec 11 2013)

National Steel Car will lay off almost one-fifth of its workforce by the end of the week.

Notices are being issued to 400 workers at the Kenilworth Avenue North plant — but roughly half of that number have the hope of a recall early in the new year.

Hal Bruckner, the company's human resources director, said jobs are being cut because an order has ended.

The recall will follow tooling up for a new product.

"This will affect close to 400 people and, for us, that's one whole production line," Bruckner said. "This is a bad timing issue. The timing is very unfortunate."

NSC currently has about 2,000 workers, but employment at the plant rises and falls regularly according to demand for rail cars.

Between January 2011 and August 2012, for example, it hired more than 1,200 people after getting an order for 1,000 cars for Saskatchewan's potash industry.

In January 2010 it recalled 1,100 workers, ending a temporary shutdown that started the previous summer, and then in March announced a layoff for May of that year.

To counter some of that pattern, Bruckner said the company is looking to expand its product line into tanker cars.