“A WARN notice was sent to the state because (former plant owner) PPG is laying off all the people,” Rebecca Ruan-O’Shaughnessy, Fuyao’s director of legal affairs and government relations, said in an email Friday. “It is Fuyao’s plan to re-open and hire employees. It would be the case for many that they are laid off by PPG one day and hired by Fuyao the next day.”
Fuyao bought 1.2 million square feet of the Moraine plant at West Stroop Road and Kettering Boulevard for $15 million in May. It bought the Mount Zion plant from PPG Industries in August.
John Gauthier, the president of Fuyao Glass America Inc. — which owns both the Mount Zion plant and the Moraine plant — told the Dayton Daily News this week that the Illinois plant has some 180 workers and may have more once both production lines are operating there.
The Mount Zion plant will make glass from raw materials and send it to the Fuyao Moraine plant, where the glass will be bent, shaped and assembled for the company’s automotive customers in North America, Gauthier and other Fuyao leaders have said.
Bob White, a staff representative with the United Steel Workers in Granite City, Ill., also said the plant will keep running.
The Illinois WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice alerts the state to 187 permanent layoffs at the plant.
Gauthier said this week that the company’s plan is to use both of the Mount Zion plant’s production lines, growing employment to 225 to 250 workers there.
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