 [Washington Examiner] WILMERDING, Pennsylvania — By July of this year, the last man on the job here at the Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation will, in all likelihood, turn around as he reaches the threshold of the same front door hundreds of thousands of workers have passed through since the 1890s. For the last time, he will look out over the 300,000-square-foot plant that has provided this country with so much technology and innovation for nearly 140 years, and he will think about the men and women who went before, and then turn out the lights for the last time.
This is a solemn process that has happened across this country for the past 40 years and put into motion here on Christmas Eve when Wabtec filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice, which requires employers to let employees know of a scheduled plant closure. It is a move that will affect the remaining 94 employees — from a plant that once employed thousands — with the layoffs beginning next month and the closure expected to be complete by July. |