Alcoa, the Latest "Slasher" in Our Times

Alcoa will idle the Massena West smelter and will not modernize its closed east plant. This is in spite of a deal with the state to maintain 750 jobs at the west plant and modernize the pot line at the east plant in exchange for megawatts of discount-rate electricity from the New York Power Authority.

The decision to close the west smelter will cost 487 people their jobs, including many held by Mohawk aluminum workers.

The casthouses, forgings and extrusions facilities at Massena’s west plant will remain open, according to the company.

The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council says they hope Alcoa will honor its commitment to remediate pollution from years of contaminating the Grasse River with polychlorinated biphenyls and other dangerous chemicals. A company spokesperson says the $243 million project will continue as obligated.

“Our thoughts go out to our neighbors and our own community members following yesterday’s decision by Alcoa to significantly scale back its operations in Massena and cut nearly 500 positions,” Tribal Council said in a prepared statement released Nov. 3. “We can only imagine the difficult decision that hundreds of families will be forced to make during the upcoming holiday season as a result of the company choosing to protect its profit margin, rather than jobs. It’s the same approach Alcoa took in gaining approval to only partially re-mediate the Grasse River that they contaminated for decades; which we hope they will still pursue despite being an insufficient solution.”

“We will continue to meet our obligations associated with the remediation of the Grasse River,” Alcoa corporate spokesperson Monica Orbe said the same day.

Within 24 hours of the announcement, outrage sparked on social media. Captioned pictures commonly referred to as “memes” were circulating that said “F*** You Alcoa.” Another showed the company’s logo with a hand holding up a middle finger superimposed over the insignia. Massena videographer and historian John Michaud III released a video titled “Alcoa Backstabs Massena, New York.” That can be viewed at http://bit.ly/1NcgHh5.

Alcoa in the last couple of years has reneged twice on deals with the state that guaranteed jobs in exchange for below-rate NYPA electricity.

In summer 2013, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was quoted as saying 1,000 jobs would be guaranteed.

After the closure of the potlines at the east plant, the state and company agreed to keep 750 jobs.

With the west plant smelter being shut down, there will only be 263 Alcoa employees left in Massena.

The original agreement also called for NYPA to reduce the amount of power they supply to Alcoa and waive two utility charges on Alcoa’s monthly bills until the new line is operational.

When asked if Alcoa intends to repay the power discount in light of breaking the deal, a second Alcoa spokesperson said their would work with NYPA, as the contract has a termination clause.

“Alcoa will work with NYPA on all issues related to the contract termination, per contract requirements,” NYPA corporate spokesperson Sonya Elam Harden said.

Both Massena’s mayor and town supervisor say the municipality must reinvent itself to survive the closure.

“We’ve known in this community for several years, we have to reinvent ourselves, change the way we grow our economy … we cannot rely on industrial jobs anymore,” Mayor Currier said. He added that in the near future he will discuss publically “a number of new ideas and initiatives we’ve been working on.”

Town Supervisor Joseph Gray said Massena needs to look to other areas that lost major economic engines, such as Plattsburgh or Rome, who used to depend upon large U.S. Air Force bases.

“If you look at places like Plattsburgh or Rome where they lost their air bases, they went through a difficult time of transformation. Nowadays, Plattsburgh, I’m amazed, it’s like boomtown there,” Gray said. “I’m hopeful we can regroup and come out strong or stronger down the road.”

Once the curtailment announced Nov. 3 is complete, it will mean they have eliminated 45 percent of their total smelting capacity since 2007.

“Alcoa has consistently taken decisive actions to create a commodity business that is positioned to succeed throughout the cycle,” said Klaus Kleinfeld, Alcoa chairman and CEO. “We have closed or curtailed unprofitable capacity, repowered key assets at lower energy prices, built-up a profitable value-add casthouse network, established the foundation for a strong commercial bauxite business, and made substantial productivity improvements. In the face of continued adverse market forces, we are once again not standing still. These difficult, but necessary measures will further strengthen our upstream portfolio, reducing our cost position and driving greater resilience as we prepare to launch this business as a strong standalone company in the second half of 2016.”

Once these actions are implemented, Alcoa will have curtailed or closed 673,000 metric tons of uncompetitive smelting capacity and 2.5 million metric tons of what they call “uncompetitive refining capacity” since its announced review of 500,000 metric tons of smelting capacity and 2.8 million metric tons of refining capacity in March.

United Steelworkers Local 420 President Bob Smith did not return a request for comment. His union represents the hourly employees running the Alcoa smelters.