(Montana City) -- Idle since the end of November, some 50 hourly employees will go back to work at the Ash Grove Cement Co. plant in Montana City in less than two weeks as the plant returns to production.
“We are delighted that all of our workers are coming back,” said Dave Mott, the plant’s human resources manager.
A handful of workers — electricians and maintenance workers — will return to the plant over the next several days, with the remaining 45 expected back on Feb. 15.
Travis Smith, local president of the union representing the hourly workers, said they were told last fall that they’d likely be back to work by March 1.
“Everybody’s pretty excited. These kinds of things concern you a great deal because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Smith said. “They told us we wouldn’t be out of work any later than March 1, and the idea was we’ll hope for something earlier.”
The Montana City plant was one of nine — the company has 10 plants — around the country where production was suspended last fall due to what the company called “adverse economic conditions.” Demand for cement was down, and inventories were running high. Now those inventories have been depleted and it’s time for production to resume.
“This is sooner than we anticipated because we were not at 100 percent inventory when we shut down, and we’ve had steady sales, though not phenomenal,” Smith said.
Spokeswoman Jacqueline Clark said the Overland Park, Kan.-based company is in the process of resuming production at its facilities — Montana City isn’t the first or the last to resume operations, she said.
This was the second closure in less than 12 months for the Montana City plant, which sent workers home last spring to investigate a possible finding of asbestos in its Clark Gulch quarry. The quarry and plant were determined to be safe after dozens of tests by several government agencies and the company itself.
While another shut-down isn’t on the immediate horizon, Clark said 2010 looks like a challenging year for cement makers.
“The industry is still way off,” she said. “This is going to be another difficult year.”
By:John Harrington
Source: http://www.helenair.com/news/article_b6fda900-1088-11df-b5b7-001cc4c03286.html