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The eBearing News
May 17, 2004
Timken May Close Three
Canton-area Bearing Plants
copyright © 2004 eBearing Inc.
The Timken Company (USA) announced it is planning to shut down the three bearing manufacturing facilities
geographically closest to its Canton, Ohio world headquarters.
The affected plants are Canton Industrial Bearings -- sitting next door to corporate headquarters, Gambrinus
Industrial Bearing, and Gambrinus Roller Bearing.
The three cover as many as 8,500 different bearings, but most production involves low-volume
specialty bearings for heavy industrial, rolling mill, aerospace and other niche markets.
Collectively, the Canton plants now employ over 1,300 people: 170 salaried and 1,158 hourly. Hourly
workers are represented by the United Steelworkers of America Golden Lodge Local 1123. The union local also
represents workers at Timken's nearby steelmaking facilities; its labor contract runs through September 2005.
Timken's steel manufacturing operations -- including the Gambrinus plant -- are not involved; nor are
the world headquarters or Timken Research. Timken currently employs
approximately 4,800 people across all of its Canton-area manufacturing, research, and home office facilities.
All three plants involved are elderly. Canton Bearing was built in 1901, following the company's move
from St. Louis, and was Timken's first dedicated bearing plant. The Gambrinus facilities, about two
miles away, date from 1929.
Many believe their age, condition and layout work against them in the context of modern manufacturing.
"Let's face it," a facilities broker told eBearing, "Century manufacturing plants make great office
and arty loft conversions. World-class manufacturing can only happen in a world-class facility,
built for and tailored to the needs of that business today and into the future."
But the forces behind the plant closings go beyond the aging buildings.
Although the three plants have reportedly been under scrutiny for much longer, their
precarious situation went public last fall when the company openly expressed
its frustration with the plants' lack of progress, despite over $100 million in recent capital investments.
Timken management openly challenged workers and the USWA to take seriously the needs for
change, make improvements, or be closed.
Mike Arnold, Industrial Group President, warned at the time, "the plants are unable to profitably win
new business from equipment manufacturers."
Since 1999, sales of bearings produced at the three plants are off more than 27%, while the company
has allowed retirement and attrition to whittle the workforce from 2,100 to just over 1,300.
In its plant closing announcement, Timken used uncharacteristically harsh terms:
"We have been meeting with the union for more than eight months to discuss how to make our bearing operations
competitive in our changing global marketplace," said President and CEO Jim Griffith, "We are disappointed
that our talks with the union did not lead to the changes necessary to make these facilities viable. Therefore,
we will begin moving the production to plants where they can be manufactured competitively."
Timken gave no specific schedule for the closings, internally indicating it may take up to
two or three years. In a statement, Timken said, "The company will now meet with the union
about this decision. More specific information will not be available until after these discussions, including:
the timing of the closure; the impact on employment; and the magnitude of the savings and charges for
restructuring and implementation, which could be material."
The announcement provoked an uproar louder than the combined complaints from the more than a dozen other
facilities the company closed or realigned in recent times. Employees, union representatives, civic leaders,
media pundits, editorialists, miscellaneous politicians, candiates, and presidential hopfuls all have
weighed in; some with well-reasoned thoughts, others with unhelpful knee-jerk reactions.
The USWA issued a strongly worded statement on
Monday, stating, "United Steelworkers of America officials today blasted Timken's surprise
announcement today that it plans to close three bearing plants in Canton, Ohio that employ 1,300 workers.
The union had been engaged with the Company in discussions designed to improve the cost-competitiveness of the plants."
However, the status of negotiations seems somewhat up in the air, as the same press release later
quoted District 1 Director, Columbus-based Dave McCall, in an apparently contradictory statement:
"This announcement is an outrageous blindsiding attack. We have been waiting for them to bring a proposal to
the table, and instead they deliver this cheap shot to the Canton community."
Countering Mr. McCall's position, a number of Timken employees told eBearing they believe management
instead showed "unfair favoritism," giving the Canton plants a bigger window of opportunity than was justified,
to put off the inevitable confrontation and publicity. They point out no other recently-shuttered Timken
or Torrington plants were given as much notice or as many opportunities to avoid being closed or reorganized.
"Blinders," a labor analyst told eBearing, "A lot of people seem to have forgotten Timken is no
longer a regional manufacturer. Each plant is in competition every day with other bearing
manufacturers and with other Timken plants around the U.S. and the world. It's part and parcel of the
way you run a geographically diversified manufacturer. The bottom plants must always be
identified, then turned around or shut down. The work will always be there for the best performers,
but there will always be a bottom plant."
Timken's global manufacturing initiative, an ongoing restructuring program revealed in 2001, aims to put
individual products into facilities where they can be produced at the highest quality and lowest cost.
• click here to read the 2001 manufacturing restructuring article
The pace of plant closings and production realignments quickened dramatically since Timken acquired The
Torrington Company and its 25 facilities in early 2003. Burdened with high fixed overhead and underutilized
floorspace scattered around the world, Timken has had to work quickly to merge two bearing companies which
tellingly still clung to their turn-of-the-last-century figurehead facilities. In fact, the acquisition
gave Timken the dubious honor of being named the biggest property taxpayer in both Canton, Ohio and
Torrington, Connecticut.
Contrary to several reports in the popular media, Timken said it will not move Canton's bearing production
overseas. Approximately 80% will be shifted to other U.S. facilities. Likely to top the list are more modern
yet underutilized operations such as Torrington's Tyger River facility in South Carolina or Timken's growing
Altavista or Lincolnton plants.
click here for unavoidable editorial commentary related to this article
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- by Bruce A. Carr
from individual research,
tips and commercial sources.
Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.
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eBearing.com ... for everything that moves™
Entire contents Copyright 1999-2008, eBearing Inc. All rights reserved.
eBearing.com and "... for everything that moves" are registered
trademarks of eBearing Inc.
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eBearing.com ... for everything that moves™
Entire contents Copyright © 1999-2008, eBearing Inc. All rights reserved.
eBearing.com and "... for everything that moves" are registered trademarks of eBearing Inc.
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