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Glass plant goes dark
By GRACE WYLER
NILES
The lights at the Mahoning Valley Glass Plant were turned off for the last time Wednesday.
“It is a very sad day in the Mahoning Valley,” said Stephen Tormey, a spokesman for the Pittsburgh-based United Electric Workers Union, which represents the plant’s workers.
The General Electric plant has not been operational since last year, but 43 workers have stayed on to gut the facility, under a union agreement that requires the company to give employees one year’s notice before closing a plant.
The plant employed 109 when the closing was announced last March. About 60 percent of the workers took voluntary layoffs or were eligible to retire, said Janice Fraser, GE spokeswoman.
The Mahoning Glass Plant is the third GE plant that has closed in the region since 2008. All three plants produced materials for incandescent lighting, which will be banned in the U.S. by 2012.
The only remaining GE plant in the area, the Ohio Lamp Plant in Warren, makes specialty incandescent bulbs, such as those used in candelabras. Those are not affected by the upcoming ban. The Warren plant employs 240 workers.
The company is phasing out the inefficient incandescents in favor of high-efficiency lights that meet new global energy standards, such as compact fluorescent lights and light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.
The problem with the company’s transition, Tormey said, is that the new lights are being made overseas. GE manufactures most of its compact fluorescent bulbs in China.
“The greater significance of the [Niles] plant closing is it shows that in large measure, GE has abandoned the entire industry of incandescent light bulbs,” Tormey said. “They’ve been outsourcing [compact fluorescent lights] to China, and there is no indication that the next generation of lighting technology [LEDs] will be manufactured in the United States.”
GE is in the process of designing LED lights, but the company does not manufacture any LEDs, Fraser said. But consumers will see more high-efficiency lighting options as the company engineers LEDs, she said.
GE announced Wednesday it has chosen the Dayton area for a $51 million center that will host research and development of advanced electric power technologies for military and civilian hybrid electric vehicles and additional uses in aircraft and ships.
The company’s GE Aviation unit said it won’t announce the precise location for the Electrical Power Integrated Systems Research & Development Center until late this year, after site research and final business reviews.
The center would begin operating in 2012, GE said.
Contributor: The Dayton Daily News