DECATUR, Ill. - Caterpillar Inc. says it plans to lay off more than 460 employees this June at its plant in Decatur.
Rachel Potts, a spokesman for the Peoria-based company, said Friday that Caterpillar is laying off the employees as part of an ongoing series of production cuts.
Caterpillar has said those cuts are in response to reduced global demand for mining equipment, which is what the plant in Decatur builds.
Cuts in some other locations have been temporary. Potts said the Decatur cuts are permanent.
Potts would not say whether more job cuts are planned in the near future.
Wisconsin union officials this week questioned Caterpillar Inc.’s plans to temporarily lay off up to 300 workers in the Milwaukee area after the company’s chief executive officer called for more visas for foreign engineers and a path to legal status for workers who entered the country illegally.
Doug Oberhelman, chairman and CEO of the Illinois based heavy-equipment manufacturer, made his appeal Monday at a kickoff event for the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition in Chicago.
“Today, we [employers] have gaps in our workforce,” he said. “We have trouble filling highly skilled positions like engineers and scientists. We also have trouble filling many lower-skilled positions.”
Union officials, however, questioned that claim because the company announced last week that it would lay off up to 40 percent of its blue-collar workers at plants in South Milwaukee and Milwaukee because equipment sales have slowed. Tony Montana, spokesman for the United Steelworkers of America, also noted that the layoffs were announced shortly before the company began negotiations with the union.
“I think it makes sense to be very skeptical of what the company says and what it does,” Montana told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for a story Wednesday.
Caterpillar spokesman Rusty Dunn said the need to attract and keep highly trained workers from other countries is a separate issue from layoffs of blue-collar workers in Wisconsin.
Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, bought South Milwaukee-based Bucyrus International in 2010 for $7.6 billion. It said previously that the length of the layoffs depended on the company’s business outlook.
Caterpillar operates a plant in North Little Rock, where it assembles road graders.
Business, Pages 32 on 04/06/2013