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Rubbertown DuPont plant closing is set

12/14/2007
By Jere Downs jdowns@courier-journal.com The Courier-Journal
By Jere Downs jdowns@courier-journal.com The Courier-Journal
DuPont Co. will stop producing Neoprene synthetic rubber at its western Louisville plant by March, costing 226 jobs as the company proceeds with a long-awaited shutdown of the historic factory.
Also vanishing will be one of the city's biggest pollution problems. By the company's own calculations, DuPont's emissions of chloroprene represent a long-term cancer risk to its residential neighbors that is 357,000 times higher than Louisville officials consider safe.
"That has been of horrendous concern," said Arnita Gadson, executive director of the West Jefferson County Community Task Force, a group that started intensive air monitoring in western Louisville in the late 1990s.
While Gadson said she feels for the employees who will lose their jobs, she added that many people will consider the closure "a victory for cleaner air."
Company officials have vigorously disputed that their plant has posed a threat to worker or community health, and have said that the city's toxic air control program should not have considered chloroprene to be as much of a threat.
Many employees will stay on into the summer to work on decontamination projects before the buildings are razed, plant manager Robert Singleton said yesterday.
"Most employees will be off the rolls here by the middle of the year," Singleton said.
Plans to close DuPont Performance Elastomers on Campground Road in Rubbertown have circulated since 2002. With the shutdown of the plant, which once employed 2,400 people, DuPont will move its synthetic rubber production to a nonunion facility in LaPlace, La., Singleton said.
With the plant closure, LaPlace will be the only U.S. site producing Neoprene, he said. Neoprene, originally used as an alternative to natural rubber, also is manufactured in Germany, Japan and China, and is used in hoses, diving suits, adhesives and other products.
DuPont has hired an outplacement firm to assist workers with resume and job-interview preparation, Singleton said. The estimated 180 union production jobs at the plant pay between $25 and $29 per hour.
"We obviously hate to lose jobs," said Chris Poynter, a spokesman for Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson.
But Poynter characterized the decision as a move announced several years ago, before the city's tougher toxic air program was put in place.
"We hope the employees can be absorbed by other companies in town," he said.
DuPont will continue operating a separate factory at an adjacent site that employs about 180, making Freon gas.
Union officials say the transition will not be an easy one for the veteran DuPont electricians, equipment operators, pipe fitters and building mechanics who will soon be jobless.
"The manufacturing (job) base of Louisville is closing down," Carl Goodman, former president of United Steelworkers Local 8-2002, said yesterday. "Finding those kind of jobs is not easy in this community."
Manufacturing employment in the Louisville area has fallen by 15,000 to less than 80,000 in the past 10 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisitics.
U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, lamented the pending shutdown.
"DuPont has a long history in the community, and they've been a great employer for a long time. I hate to see them leave," Yarmuth said.
The congressman wondered aloud whether DuPont may be consolidating U.S. Neoprene production in Louisiana in an attempt to restrict supply of the industrial commodity.
"We've asked them to show us the data that would give us confidence that is not the case," Yarmuth said. "So far, they've been very unresponsive, and they've kind of given us what I consider to be pat and somewhat disingenuous reasons for leaving."
Earlier this month, the European Commission fined DuPont, Dow Chemical Co. and other global chemical producers for fixing prices in Europe related to production of chloroprene rubber. The commission alleged that the companies engaged in a price-fixing cartel between 1992 and 1993. Bayer AG, a German chemical company, received full immunity for cooperating with investigators, while DuPont and Dow received a fine of 59.2 million euros (about $87 million), among other penalties.
DuPont spokeswoman Cathy Branciaroli did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
At the time of the European Commission decision, DuPont said the "matter has been wrongly decided." The company added that it was committed to meeting the "highest standards of ethical and legal compliance."
The U.S. government began producing Neoprene in 1942 at the Rubbertown plant, which DuPont purchased in 1948. Employment was at 2,400 in 1965, when a series of explosions killed 12 people, closing the factory for three weeks. By 1993, the number of workers had declined to 700. The plant continued operations in 1996 as a joint venture with Dow Chemical. Now, DuPont is the sole owner of the subsidiary.
Singleton said DuPont's decision to consolidate operations in Louisiana was fueled in part by a declining market for Neoprene.
Employees work 12-hour shifts at the plant, producing Neoprene, also known as polychloroprene, in 55-pound bags of rubbery chips or in liquid form shipped in 55-gallon drums and tanker trucks. Manufacturers use the chemical in the production of conveyor belts, hoses and glue, he added.
The other DuPont factory on the site, producing Freon, or vinyl fluoride, was the recipient of about $10 million worth of investment last year. Vinyl fluoride manufactured in Louisville is a component in Tedlar, a film used in aerospace, construction and other industries. Demand for Tedlar has grown because of its application in the production of increasingly popular photovoltaic solar panels. Long delays in the closure of the Neoprene subsidiary in Louisville were the result of Hurricane Katrina, which delayed needed upgrades at the Louisiana facility, Singleton said. Production in Rubbertown will end around March 1. Workers employed thereafter will be decontaminating the plant in preparation for its demolition. Reporter Jere Downs can be reached at (502) 582-4669. Reporter Jim Bruggers and Dow Jones Newswires contributed to this story.

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Last modified: 8/26/2008