In a statement released on Thursday, Republic Steel announced that is is temporarily idling rolling mill operations at its Lorain facility. 200 workers will be laid off.

Those 200 employees were the only workers at the facility.

"It really is kind of shocking," United Steelworkers Local 1104 President Dennis Hamilton told Fox 8 News, who said the plant has been struggling for the last year. "The steelworkers here in Lorain have been through a lot in the last year, and they're strong and they're good workers, and I think going forward we'll get through this together."

There will be 900 employees that will continue to be employed at Republic Steel's other locations, in Canton, Massillon, Solon, Lackawanna, New York and Hamilton, Ontario.

"We hope that we can resume the Lorain operations in the near future," stated President and CEO Jaime Vigil in the statement. "We are positioned for growth and will be ready to provide capacity once the market turns around."

They said in the statement that the Lorain plant has struggled throughout the last year and had no other option but to idle the mill operations at the Lorain plant.

U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who represents Lorain, said she had not received official notification of the layoffs.

"These lost jobs reflect the total and repeated failure of our government to prevent other countries, including China, from raiding our economy, closing their own markets to our goods, and committing countless anti-competitive trade abuses including dumping cheap steel into our marketplace below cost," Kaptur said in a statement.

Kaptur said her proposed Balancing Trade Act would renegotiate any trade deal that has produced a deficit of more than $10 bullion for at least three consecutive years.

Back in March of 2015, 200 employees were laid off as well from the Lorain plant.

 

fox8.com

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