BRILLION, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – It’s been a little over a week since more than 300 employees at Brillion Iron Works found out they would be out of job by the end of the year.
Sandy Kochs spoke to WLUK and says she’s still in shock.
“We expected a great thing when they bought us. We were all very happy and thought ok they are really going to help us.”
Metaldyne Performance Group, known as MPG, acquired the Brillion iron foundry September 2nd for $14 million.
Less than two weeks later MPG announced the plant would stop operating by the end of this year.
Thursday evening, United Steel Workers Local 2475 held a meeting at a Brillion restaurant to update employees on severance talks it’s had with MPG.
Andrew Lisowe tells WLUK, they’re not offering much.
“We’ll be lucky if we do get anything, but we’re going to keep trying. Our union hopefully will be working as hard as they can to take care of all these union workers.”
While MPG has said it would like to relocate employees, many employees say there has been little to no interest from anyone in doing that.
The closest plant is about two hours, and the soon to be unemployed workers say they’d rather stay in Brillion and try to find work they can drive to in either Oshkosh or Green Bay.
Brillion Iron Works is one of Calumet County’s largest employers with 293 hourly and 49 salaried employees.
MPG has Wisconsin locations in Browntown, Reedsburg, St Cloud, Minnesota, Iron Mountain, Michigan, and New Castle, Indiana.
