More than 200 workers at Tillsonburg’s Siemens plant are out of a job as of today as the plant announced it will be closing by 2018.
More job losses will be coming as the plant gets closer to it's closing date.
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy announced Tuesday morning that its turbine manufacturing plant in Tillsonburg will close by early 2018.
Of the company’s 340 employees, 206 were expected to be off the job right away. The company said the remaining 134 positions would be phased out over the course of 2017.
The company blamed the closure on an increasingly competitive global energy market, saying the plan to build “significant larger blades” that the TIllsonburg plant can not produce at this time.
The building, here at Tillsonburg, is constrained physically. So any larger blades would require a significant investment and in a cost-competitive market that creates obvious challenges," said David Hickey of Siemens Canada.
The company didn't mention the provincial government's decision to put a hold on green energy contracts, but workers were putting blame at the feet of the premier.
Some employees didn't like the way the announcement was made, with workers showing up for shifts and then being turned away.
"It was all hidden behind the scenes. Like, we weren't told a thing. We were just told to keep working, keep working. But we were walking product disapear off the shelves and nothing came back in," said worker Ryan Gilles
Affected employees will be provided with severance pay and career counselling, the company said.
