Layoffs at Cemex Come In Time For Holidays

Cemex will hand pink slips to workers at its Brooksville North cement production plant this month, according to state records and a company spokeswoman.

But the number of layoffs won't be as high as initially feared, Jennifer Borgan, director of communications for Cemex, said Monday.

The company will temporarily shutter the plant at 16301 Ponce de Leon Blvd. and had planned to lay off approximately 40 workers, according to a Sept. 15 letter from the Cemex's human resources manager Laura Jordan to the state's Agency for Workforce Innovation. Companies are required by law to notify the state of mass layoffs.

But that estimate has since dropped, Borgen said in an e-mail Monday. She could not provide a specific number by deadline, however.

Many of the north plant's employees are being transferred to "other facilities," Borgen said. Among them is Cemex's Brooksville South plant on Cobb Road.

The layoffs will take effect this month when the operations at the plant are suspended, Borgen said. The affected employees will receive severance packages, she said.

Some employees will remain at the north plant to run shipping operations and maintain the facility, Borgen said.

The employees were informed of the layoffs back in September.

Hernando Today reported then that the company would temporarily shutter the plant by the end of the year because the hobbling housing market has caused demand for its produces to plummet.

The company plans to reopen the north plant "when conditions improve," Borgen said then. She repeated that Monday.

The company is moving forward with a $230 million project to build a new cement kiln at the Cobb Road facility. The second kiln was expected to add some 30 jobs to the company's roughly 200-member Hernando work force. It now appears those positions will be filled with existing employees.

The company last year bought out Rinker, the Australia-based maker of ready-mix concrete and aggregates, for $14.2 billion. The Brooksville South Plant had been a Rinker facility.

Cemex announced in September total earnings of some $1.25 billion for the third quarter of this year, a decrease of about 3 percent compared to the same period last year.

The continued decline in the residential construction sector is the main culprit, company officials said. That decline, in turn, affects the industrial and commercial sectors.