New Lafayette plant unlikely to affect local GE layoffs

March 31--An announcement last week that GE Aviation plans to build a $100 million jet engine assembly facility in Lafayette drew some attention in Bloomington, where another arm of the company laid off workers last year.

GE Appliances cut positions at its Bloomington plant on North Curry Pike at the end of October, citing slipping demand for the side-by-side refrigerators the factory produces. A total of 131 jobs were eliminated from the 522-worker plant, 56 through layoffs and 75 through early retirements.

Laid-off workers' severance packages included up to a year of health and life insurance. Those workers also received something that could come in handy at other GE plants: preferential placement status.

That status basically means the company will hire them at other domestic GE manufacturing plants before it hires someone else off the street. And GE expects to hire more than 200 people within five years at the new Lafayette facility, which is going to assemble a new "LEAP" engine that GE is building as part of a joint venture with a French company.

But laid-off Bloomington workers' preferential placement status might not help them land a job in Lafayette.

For starters, the Lafayette plant isn't slated to begin hiring until 2015 at the earliest. That would be more than a year after the Bloomington layoffs -- a long time out of the workforce.

Perhaps more importantly, though, the positions in Lafayette call for a specific skill set. They'll require an airframe and powerplant license, according to GE Appliances spokeswoman Kim Freeman.

Laid-off Bloomington workers would get an interview for any position for which they qualify in the new Lafayette plant, according to Carven Thomas. Thomas is the president of IBEW Local 2249, which represents GE Appliances' Bloomington workers.

A number of other GE locations are currently hiring as well, according to Thomas. He said he would rather call workers back in Bloomington than see them go to another city, though.

"My ultimate goal is to get them back here in Bloomington, to bring them back in the shop without them having to relocate," he said.

Tax breaks for the Lafayette plant caught Thomas' attention, he said. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered GE Aviation a package that included up to $3.3 million in conditional tax credits, up to $332,000 in training grants and up to $1.35 million from the state's Industrial Development Grant Fund. Tippecanoe County and the city of Lafayette were also considering incentives.

"The thing I keyed in on was what brought GE Aviation here -- the corporate tax breaks," Thomas said. "Our plant is trying to do whatever we can do. I hope that corporate tax rate will entice not just GE Aviation, but other sectors to look at Indiana and our plant to relocate some assemblies."

Thomas is exploring possibilities for bringing other type of work to the Bloomington plant. But he said he cannot share details about any possibilities at this time.

Even if no new developments come on that front, laid-off Bloomington workers now have access to training and re-employment services that weren't initially available when they lost their jobs.

The U.S. Department of Labor ruled earlier this year that employees totally or partially separated from employment at the plant on or after Sept. 30 qualify for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program services.

The TAA program is for workers displaced by foreign imports and shifts in production out of the country. Records show GE officials and the union petitioned for the employers to be eligible for the program.

GE has made the case that side-by-side refrigerators being produced outside of the country have driven down price points in the United States, making it hard to manufacture the refrigerators competitively in Bloomington.

TAA assistance includes training, job search and relocation allowances and re-employment. It can also include weekly trade re-adjustment allowances paid to workers after unemployment insurance benefits are exhausted.

Many laid-off employees are taking advantage of the benefits, according to Thomas. In many cases, they're working with schools and colleges in the area, he said.

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