The Kikes, traitors and the overall mudding of America is turning the United States into a third world cesspool. This does not only effect the plant workers itself it will effect the contractors also.

Contractors like the Truck drivers that haul these products to the costumers, the folks that work on the infrastructure of the plant and so many other.

This is a Big plant for people in Louisville to loose.

Rohm and Haas plant to eliminate 220 jobs
Rubbertown plant's 'devastating' news

By James Bruggers • jbruggers@courier-journal.com • June 18, 2008

Two-thirds of the workers at the Rohm and Haas chemical plant in Louisville will be out of work by the middle of next year, part of a corporate belt-tightening that the Philadelphia-based company blamed on high energy costs and the housing slump.
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The Rubbertown plant said it was cutting 220 of 353 positions -- the latest in what has been a steady decline from a peak of 801 in 1989. Most of the jobs to be lost pay between $60,000 and $70,000 a year.

"This is a sad day for the plant and the community," said Jane Bowen, plant manager. "These are great people. They are hard-working."

Overall, the company is cutting 925 jobs in North America -- about 6 percent of its total work force.

Stephen Gahafer, president of United Steelworkers Local 367, which represents 157 workers at the plant, said the news was "devastating."

Families will be scrambling to figure out how to pay their mortgages, health insurance and other costs of living, he said.

The union issued a statement saying it would work "diligently in an effort to lessen the impact on our members through every avenue available to us."

But John Hunt, the union's plant chairman, said comparable-paying jobs will be hard to find in a community where big names in manufacturing, such as Ford and General Electric, are having their own problems, and other manufacturing jobs have been lost.

Since 1999, the Louisville area has lost more than 19,000 manufacturing jobs, with more than 1,000 lost last year alone when manufacturing employment totaled 76,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The neighboring DuPont Performance Elastomers plant earlier this year ceased its Louisville operations. It employed 180 union workers making more than $50,000 a year.

"We knew something was coming," Hunt said. "We never dreamed it would be something this big."

Chris Poynter, a spokesman for Mayor Jerry Abramson, said the city had been "proactive in trying to keep these jobs," and said city officials are "obviously very disappointed we are losing them."

He cited a 2004 tax rebate package through the Kentucky Industrial Revitalization Act that's made the company eligible for up $2.4 million. Because the plant will drop below 250 employees, the tax breaks will end, he said.

Bowen said non-union employees would be given severance packages based on their years of service. In some cases, she said, they could amount to a year's pay with some health benefits.

She said management will negotiate departure terms with the Steelworkers and one other union at the plant -- the SEIU Firemen and Oilers Local 320.

"We will do everything we can to assist our employees through this challenging time and hope to remain part of the Louisville community into the future," Bowen said.

City officials said Louisville's local work force development agency, Kentuckiana Works, will be available to help workers find new jobs and, in some cases, retrain them for new careers.

The cutbacks will also mean fewer air emissions from a plant that played a key role in a debate over Louisville's air quality.

Bowen said the city's Strategic Toxic Air Reduction Program, which Rohm and Haas opposed when it was created in 2005, had nothing to do with the company's retrenchment.

Bowen said that by next summer the plant will shut down its unit that makes acrylic emulsions -- a key part of latex paint. The plant is also ending a significant portion of its plastics additives production area.

The plant will continue to make plastics additives and distill a chemical called methyl methacrylate, used in the manufacture of plastics and resins.

One key factor was that the housing slump had cut the demand for paints and floor polishes, Bowen said. With fewer new homes being built and fewer people remodeling, demand for the products made with Rohm and Haas materials slumped, she said.

She also said the company has encountered higher freight costs getting its products to customers.

Hartford Kaufman, a Rohm and Haas retiree and member of its community advisory board, said high oil prices also affect the cost of raw materials.

"When I heard (the announcement), my heart jumped through my chest," he said. "I would hate to see some of these jobs going out of the country."

Bowen insisted that none of the Louisville jobs would be shipped overseas, but she acknowledged that some of the plastic additives products now made in Louisville will be made in Singapore or Scotland in the future.

Reporter James Bruggers can be reached at (502) 582-4645.