MUNSTER, Ind. - The Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad is laying off 30 employees due to a sharp drop in shipping by steel mills, automakers and major railroads, the Northwest Indiana Times reports.
Union officials were told of the layoffs Wednesday and all employees affected were notified by Thursday, according to IHB General Manager Jim Roots.
"This is a furlough," Roots said. "It's a layoff. When business comes back we'll bring the people back. Hopefully it's a short-term event."
The last sizable layoff at the IHG was in 1983. The short line railroad, headquartered in Hammond, will employ 750 once the layoffs are complete.
The layoffs are concentrated among locomotive engineers, conductors and trainmen, with a few mechanical employees also laid off, Roots said.
"It affects both Indiana and Illinois, so it's not concentrated in Hammond," Roots said. "It's spread across our system."
The railroad is also laying off about two dozen maintenance workers, which is normal for this time of year, according to Mary Kay Conley, IHB human resources director. The railroad intends to call them back in the spring, as it does ever year.
Those workers maintain tracks, bridges, buildings and other railroad facilities.
The union official who received the layoff notices for those positions said even seasonal layoffs have become unsettling, as rail and trucking companies across the nation begin to make big cuts in their work forces.
"Some of this is seasonal, that's true," said Richard McLean, assistant general chairman for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees. "But who knows with this economy?"
The fortunes of the 54-mile IHB railroad closely follows that of the industrial customers it serves and the nation's Class I railroads, which use the IHB to get freight transferred between Chicago's crowded rail corridors.
IHB's major customers, mainly steel mills, have cut production and jobs in recent months.
Business on the railroad held up well through the early stages of the economic slowdown, as steel mills were still producing at high levels, Root said.
But there was a dramatic fall-off in business at the end of November.
The IHB tracks circle Chicago from near O'Hare to Northwest Indiana. It has major rail yards in Riverdale, Hammond and East Chicago. Cars and trucks from most North American automakers are sorted and shipped from its yard in Hammond.
(This item appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times Dec. 12, 2008.)
