Trane Details Job Cuts

TYLER — One of Tyler’s largest employers is offering more details after announcing big job cuts. They happen every year, but these may be different. Trane is laying off workers, over 500 of them. It’s a pattern they’ve come to expect, but they didn’t expect what came next. “This action eliminates 528 positions,” Patrick O’Connell of parent company Ingersoll Rand said Friday. “The workers were notified on July 8th, and their last day with the company is today, July 15th.”

Trane typically has around 1600 employees, but that number can be a bit flexible. If you are an hourly, union worker at Trane, you’re used to the pattern. You are laid off toward the end of the summer when demand for air conditioning slacks off, and then rehired early the next year as it picks up again. This time it’s different for two reasons: it’s not the end of the summer — and this time the layoff includes salaried workers. O’Connell says it’s normal. “I don’t know the exact time frames, but I would say that this is about when we usually announce them,” he told our news partner KETK.

Tom Mullins of the Tyler Economic Development Council says that no matter what the company says, this is early. “Typically we don’t lose them until 30 or 45 days from now,” Mullins says. “You know, August-September.” And the white collar layoffs are troubling. “Losing the management jobs is a surprise — 40-45 jobs that are not going to return,” Mullins says. O’Connell would not give an exact figure. “We’re not disclosing the number of those salaried positions eliminated,” he told us. “It was not a material number.” Mullins replied, “That’s hard for those individuals and those families. “In this economy, they’re not going to be able to walk down the street and find something else.”