A man enters the Goodyear Tire manufacturing plant in Brier Park area of Medicine Hat on June 16, 2020.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Goodyear workers in Medicine Hat are on temporary layoff this week as the company says it completes a “routine” production realignment.
Some 200 workers are employed at the facility in the Brier Park industrial park in northwest Medicine Hat.
The company gave no specific reason for the shutdown at the plant, though officials say operations should resume on April 5.
“The Goodyear-Medicine Hat plant is undergoing a temporary shutdown as part of the company’s routine production scheduling adjustments to best accommodate market, material and customer-demand fluctuations,” reads a statement from the company’s headquarters in Akron, Ohio.
It was closed for several months in the spring of 2020 along with facilities across the Goodyear global production network as a precaution during the early stages of the pandemic, but local operations reopened last June.
The pandemic also created large shifts in consumer demand and replacement unit sales. More recently, extreme weather in the U.S. south has caused problems across several industries for material procurement and logistics.
The United Steelworkers, which represents employees at the plant, did not provide comment to the News.
