Cliffs Cutting Iron Production, Affecting 625 Jobs

STEVE KARNOWSKI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ⿿ About 625 people will be laid off when Cliffs Natural Resources idles a Michigan mine and cuts production at a Minnesota operation due to declining demand for iron ore, the company announced Monday.

Two of the four production lines at Northshore Mining's taconite plant in Silver Bay will shut down effective Jan. 5, resulting in 125 layoffs, said Cliffs' Minnesota spokeswoman Sandy Karnowski. It has not been determined how those layoffs will be distributed between the plant and Northshore's mine in Babbitt, she said.

Cliffs also plans an extended summer shutdown at the Empire Mine near Palmer, Mich., which will affect 500 jobs beginning in the second quarter of 2013. Empire currently has 730 employees.

"It's a tough day for all of us at Cliffs and we're hopeful to see the market conditions improve in the future," Karnowski said. Northshore Mining has 665 total employees.

The laid-off employees will be offered supplemental unemployment pay and benefits based on their years of service and could be recalled if demand recovers, she said.

The Cleveland-based company also said in its announcement that it plans to delay portions of its Bloom Lake mine expansion in Quebec.

"We believe it is prudent and necessary to match our production volumes with market demand. We will remain operationally flexible to ramp up production volumes throughout the year if the demand increases," Laurie Brias, Cliffs' president of global operations, said in a statement.

The layoffs at Cliffs could be the first wave of production cuts on Minnesota's Iron Range, said Don Fosnacht, director of the Center for Applied Research and Technology Development, which is part of the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

The global economic slump, coupled with growing worldwide capacity in the steel industry, has depressed prices for iron ore, Fosnacht said. And the fears of automatic federal tax increases and spending cuts should Congress fail to reach a budget deal by year's end are holding back the domestic steel industry.

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