Behind the layoffs

On a recent Monday, new hires at Genesis Alkali went through onboarding and orientation. The next day, they received a letter telling them they were going to be laid off. 

On Tuesday, November 5, employees at Genesis were informed that there would be a reduction in workforce at the company. When the United Steelworkers Local 13214 union was informed of the layoffs, they were told 30 employees would be let go, according to Union President Marshal Cummings. He was also told the company was aiming for around 40 employees total to be laid off, including salary employees, although those details haven't been finalized. 

The explanation the company has given for the workforce reduction is that it is driven by the state of the market and a decrease in demand for soda ash globally. However, Marshal Cummings believes there may be more at play behind the decision, including neglect and mismanagement.

A decline in global market demand

Genesis Alkali Wyoming, a trona mine and soda ash plant outside Green River, is one of the oldest companies in the "trona patch." This is not the first time the company has been through a reduction in workforce, according to Genesis Alkali Director of Communications David Caplan, but he pointed out that they have always come back from it, because the global market always goes up and down. 

"It's not something that anybody wants to see happen, but when it does, you've got to take action to make sure that you're going to be around for another 75 years," Caplan said.

When the company announced the reduction in workforce to employees, they explained that the decision was in response to market conditions, according to Caplan. The soda ash produced by the trona industry is one of Wyoming's largest exports, and it is part of a worldwide soda ash market, with other main exporters of soda ash being China and Turkiye. 

"What we're finding that started earlier this year is a slow down in demand in some of those export markets," Caplan explained. "I think it's a classic supply and demand balance right now."

When supply exceeds demand, the market becomes unbalanced, Caplan said. He pointed out that this happens in every industry, and has happened multiple times in the trona industry even within the past decade.  

Regarding the current trona market, Caplan pointed to statistics and reports from sources like the U.S. Geological Survey that show prices for soda ash exports going down even while supply goes up.

"That really helps to explain the action that we felt we needed to take in response to these market conditions weakening," Caplan said. "The whole industry worldwide is in this down cycle, and that's really the main driver for these layoffs."

An article from Glass International called "A global overview of the soda ash market" published in September uses multiple sources and statistics to compare supply and demand for soda ash globally. It states that world demand, excluding China, fell by 3.2% in 2023, and U.S. export prices at the beginning of 2024 were down to $230 per metric ton, falling from $298 per metric ton in 2023.

"Every so often, when you're in a commodity business like we are with soda ash, you get into these situations, and the market has to find its way back to sort of an equilibrium at some point," Caplan said.

Caplan also emphasized that the layoffs will affect both hourly and salary employees. He noted that discussions concerning salary employees are still ongoing, so he wasn't able to give an official number of employees affected by the workforce reductions. 

"We don't take these reductions in the hourly or the salaried workforce lightly," Caplan said. "We have tried working with other measures, other cost improvements, initiatives, and are still pursuing those aggressively. But as the market conditions worldwide continue to deteriorate, these and other efforts, although they're important, they're not enough to prevent a reduction in force." 

Layoffs and new hires

When employees were notified about the workforce reduction, they were also notified that TATA Chemicals, the other unionized soda ash producer in the trona patch, was hiring.

"We wanted to get the word out to them while that hiring window was still open," Caplan said, adding, "That was good as far as timing."

The open hiring window at TATA gave Genesis employees an opportunity, and TATA even extended the hiring period by another week to give those affected by the layoffs time to apply, according to Union President Marshal Cummings. However, the timing of the situation also raised questions for Cummings. 

"How would they be prepping to onboard or taking applications while we're laying people off?" he asked. "That was the first thing that didn't sit really well with me when I found out."

If the main concern is the state of the global soda ash market, Cummings said he would expect other soda ash producers to be in a similar position. While they could have predicted it and prepared better to avoid measures like layoffs, it seems surprising they would be actively hiring, Cummings pointed out. 

The other main factor that has bothered and frustrated Cummings during this process was the timing of the onboarding of new employees at Genesis. 

"Monday we did our onboarding and new hire orientation, and then on Tuesday they received the letter that they're going to be laid off," Cummings said. "So they worked there for one day, and now they're getting told they're not going to have a job December 5th." 

While Cummings said he has been told by management that the employees at least have recall rights now, he believes that it would have been more responsible not to hire them in the first place. If management knew this possibility was coming, they could have informed potential employees of a hiring freeze, and kept the possibility of hiring them in the future, Cummings said. 

Many of the new hires at Genesis are young people just starting their career, often with young families and children to care for, according to Cummings. These are people who are working to put down roots and are now finding themselves uprooted, he said. 

"One individual moved 1,000 miles from Kansas with his family, closed on his house on Wednesday, and then found out the following Tuesday he won't have a job in December," Cummings explained. 

Cummings said he also heard about the possibility of some salary employees being offered buyouts, which he has tried to pursue as an option for the hourly employees being laid off. So far, the company has not agreed to any of the buyout offers the union has presented. 

"These are the people that I represent," Cummings said of the union members, including those who are losing their jobs. "My duty is to make sure that everyone knows they didn't do anything wrong, but they're the ones that are gonna have to pay the price."

Overarching concerns

When it comes to things that have been done wrong, and the consequences of those actions, Cummings believes the current layoffs are connected to more overarching concerns. He said there has been mismanagement and neglect that has occurred in certain areas at Genesis Alkali that has led to increased costs and large-scale difficulties.  

Specifically, Cummings pointed to problems including ore shafts not being repaired, the long wall not being kept in the proper sites, and underground conveyor belts being unreliable. 

Genesis has two mine shafts used to hoist ore, which are two shaft and four shaft, Cummings explained. In 2009, an engineering report on two shaft said the structural integrity of the steel was compromised and it needed to be replaced. In 2015, a job was started to replace the steel, but hadn't been finished when it was called off in 2016. In 2019, another report called for the steel to be replaced. In 2023, another report reiterated the need to replace the steel and said the concern was urgent. In 2024, an MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) inspector saw the shaft and shut it down. This left Genesis with only one shaft hoisting ore, but the remaining shaft also had a pipe fall and got an MSHA citation and had to be shut down, leaving the ore stockpiles empty at the time, which affects the entire plant, Cummings explained. 

Other problems have occurred underground, according to Cummings. One of the problems has been with the longwall, where trona is mined using bore miners. Surveyor sites are set up to direct where mining takes place, and being off the sites can cause problems, Cummings said. One concern is needing pillars that support the roof. Mining has taken place away from the surveyor site, which has created the need to put concrete pillars in. 

"What they have to do is drop millions of dollars of concrete underground, pay the money to offload, the money to deliver it, pay the money to pour it, pay the money to get it to the location underground," Cummings said. 

When Cummings inquired about the cost of these pillars, he was told that the concrete alone cost more than $2 million.

Another concern underground is the reliability of conveyor belts, which is an area where Cummings has worked in the past. Most of the people working on the belts now are new and inexperienced, Cummings said, explaining that through "no fault of their own, they haven't got the support or the training to keep the belts in working order."

With the long wall being off of the surveyor sites, unreliable belts not being able to get from where mining takes place to the shafts, and shafts needing replaced, problems and expenses have piled up, according to Cummings. 

"All this neglect has led to us being in a bad spot, and now the members are the ones that have to suffer," he said. 

In contrast to Cummings' concerns, Caplan doesn't agree that past problems are affecting current decisions.

"When it comes to the point about the two shaft and the long wall issues, that did require us to reallocate some capital funds to address those issues, but it did not have anything to do with the layoffs," Caplan said. "We have a capital plan, but often during the middle of the year, we have to adjust that accordingly. And that was a case in point with those two items...so they were not drivers in our decision to proceed with the layoff." 

While Cummings remains concerned about the consequences of neglect, he also believes future changes in management could produce a positive change in the direction of the mine and plant. His hope is for Genesis Alkali to be the best and most productive trona mine while also being the safest.

"If we just keep treating people like a number and like they're expendable, and we cut them as easy as we cut steam to a plant, we're never going to get there," he said.