About 90 jobs lost at ESAB in Florence

About 90 employees of The ESAB Group Inc.’s Florence site on South Ebenezer Road have been laid off, company officials confirmed Thursday afternoon.

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

Click here to read the letter sent to ESAB employees.

Most of those people were based at the site; the remainder worked for the company off-site, Daniel L. Preest, vice president of human resources, said.

Preest said no more layoffs are expected at the site.

The Florence facility was established in 1969 under Union Carbide, then became Linde/L-Tec which was acquired in the ‘80s by ESAB.

ESAB was Florence County’s third-largest industrial/manufacturing employer in 2008, with an estimated 650 employees, according to the Florence County Economic Development Partnership.

Florence County’s unemployment rate hit 11.1 percent in February, up from 10.5 the previous month, according to the latest figures from the S.C. Employment Security Commission.

Connie Ford, area director of the S.C. Employment Security Commission, said as of 3 p.m. Thursday, her office had not been notified of the layoffs.

“We haven’t heard from ESAB personnel yet,” she said. “Notifications are normally done before (a layoff), but I can’t tell if they have notified the county or the state.”

Ford said the current rate of unemployment in the region will rise because of this latest round of job losses.

“It will probably cause a slight increase in the unemployment rate,” she said. “It will likely not be reflected in the April numbers, but it will be reflected by the time the May report comes out.”

Preest said he hadn’t seen documents provided to the Morning News showing the loss of more than 750 jobs company-wide and couldn’t comment on them.

According to those documents, among the jobs being eliminated company-wide are those filled by lab technicians; research chemists; chemical, electrical, mechanical, manufacturing and applications engineers; test welders; administrative assistants; draftsmen; customer service representatives; electricians; machinists; network administrators; assemblers; technicians; welders; material handlers; tool makers; inside and outside sales representatives; packers; mechanics; metal preparation specialists; packers; sheetmetal operators; regional sales managers, strategic accounts managers; and generalists.

Some of the employees who were laid off Thursday in Florence received a letter from Preest saying it was their last active day of employment, but that they would receive pay for the Good Friday holiday.

Severance packages were offered to some employees, as well. Those employees had 45 days to consider signing the severance package agreement and were advised to consult an attorney before doing so.

The company produces consumables and equipment for welding and cutting processes and applications, according to its Web site, . It conducts business in the welding and cutting equipment, welding consumables, welding automation and cutting systems industries.

ESAB officials confirmed 20 salaried employees were laid off in early February throughout the company’s North American locations, which includes a site in Florence.

Dwight Miller, vice president of general counsel of ESAB North America in Florence, said the decision to lay off employees was difficult for the company and were just one of the cost-cutting measures taken to meet the needs of consumers.

“We’ve been trying to align our costs at ESAB North America with customer demands basically going back to at least to August when the downturn started,” he said in a previous interview with the Morning News.

Among the other measures taken were early retirements, but Miller refused to discuss any cost-cutting measures that were removed from discussions prior to the final decision.

Miller said the bottom line is all about the customer.

According to a Jan. 31 report on the Web site www.SteelGuru.com, ESAB announced the closure of two European plants and global work force reductions of more than 900 people.

Charter International, the British engineering firm that owns ESAB, in a release said a 10-percent reduction (about 940 people) is the size of ESAB’s global work force. Of that number, 635 people had left the business by the end of 2008 and the remainder were expected to leave by the end of the first quarter of 2009.

A flux plant in Sweden, which the company said was at the end of its useful life and a small solid wire plant in Finland, have been closed as part of the process, the site reported.

Miller told the www.SteelGuru.com mandatory cutbacks were not been ordered for ESAB Welding and Cutting Products in Hanover, Pa., but about 40 employees at the Hanover facility were offered voluntary early retirement packages.

“There’s no facility-wide layoff in Hanover,” he told the site. “We’re not closing any plants in the United States or anything.”

The ESAB North America operating companies are The ESAB Group Inc. and its subsidiaries, Alcotec Wire Corp., ESAB Group Canada Inc. and ESAB Mexico, S.A. de C.V. The ESAB Group Inc. is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Anderson Group Inc., headquartered in Atlanta.
On the Web:

ESAB North America, www.esabna.com

SteelGuru, www.SteelGuru.com