Soda ash giant WE Soda has cut 48 jobs from its southwest Wyoming trona operations, including 32 salaried management positions and 16 contract positions, the company said Monday. The move follows the trona operator’s purchase of competitor Genesis Alkali on Feb. 28.
“Post-acquisition, consolidations were needed for some salaried management positions to achieve efficiency, reduce redundancy and to strengthen the existing hourly workforce,” WE Soda Vice President of Human Relations JoAnna DeWald told WyoFile via email.
The layoffs do not include hourly union workers, a company spokesman said.
The terminations follow 30 layoffs by the previous owner late last year — a move that irked union representatives because Genesis Alkali pink-slipped several new hires, including some who had just relocated to Wyoming to build careers. Reached Monday by WyoFile, United Steel Workers Local 13214 President Marshal Cummings said he didn’t know all the details about the recent layoffs, but said he was happy the cuts did not include union workers.
In fact, according to Cummings, WE Soda has been hiring back some of the union workers that were laid off last year. The union’s relationship with WE Soda, Cummings said, “has been extremely positive.
“They want to fix the things that are broken: management, projects, our relationship, the equipment,” he continued. “All those times I said, ‘We want to be the safest, most efficient, most productive mine in the world,’ is going to come true with this management team, it sounds like.”
WE Soda now employs about 900 workers in the region, according to Cummings.
The job cuts come only weeks after another southwest Wyoming mining company laid off 28 workers in nearby Kemmerer.
World’s largest soda ash producer
London-based WE Soda paid $1.4 billion to acquire Genesis Alkali and its operations, which include the Westvaco underground trona mine and related processing facilities, as well as the Granger solution mining facility — both located in western Sweetwater County.
“We are now the largest producer of soda ash globally and the only producer that is 100% natural, further underscoring our sustainability leadership,” WE Soda CEO Alasdair Warren said in a prepared statement on March 3. “As we welcome our new Alkali colleagues into the WE Soda family, we will bring together an extraordinary combination of experience and expertise that will create a truly world class industrial minerals company focussed on maintaining the highest standards of safety, operational excellence and sustainability.”
Integrated into the former Genesis operations is WE Soda’s Project West, a multi-billion dollar trona solution-mine expansion project now under construction near Granger.
“By integrating the [Genesis] Alkali facilities with our own Project West development, we plan to utilise the combined engineering expertise of Alkali and WE Soda, and to access existing Alkali infrastructure to significantly reduce the cost and development risk of Project West,” according to WE Soda.
Southwest Wyoming holds the world’s largest known deposit of trona, which is processed into “natural” soda ash — a key commodity in the production of glass, baking soda and myriad other products. Wyoming’s trona and soda ash industries — which employ more than 2,000 workers compared to about 4,100 direct jobs in Wyoming coal mining, according to the Wyoming Mining Association — have been in “expansion” mode in recent years.
In 2022, Genesis Alkali received $665,000 from the state — via the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services — to help train more than 300 workers as part of its efforts to revive the Granger production facility, ultimately adding about 100 workers, according to the state.
Unfortunate that there are layoffs occurring. Hopefully those jobs can be moved over to the solution mine construction. I have not seen any discussion of how the solution mines are going to affect water consumption out of the Green River. Is it true that one of the companies is looking to permit a 36″ pipeline? My understanding of solution mining is that most of that water will be evaporated.
The things that are happening with the salary people is sad but that’s the best place to start not with the people doing the work I spent my work life out their 47 years seen a lot of changes I left with hard feelings with the management but I felt that I work their when we were the best company to work for. We were # 1 with the management they had they were at getting numbers that looked good but I often wondered if we were at the same plant. When ever times got hard they got rid of people the fastest way to get their money spending down they could do that without leaving their office. I spent most time working for FMC the time working for them I probly only seen a handful of people let go. It was a company that cared about people. Their was a list of people that wanted to be Forman . Now they have to look outside for them that have know idea how to make or mine soda ash but they can make the numbers look good well I could go on and on A ferind of mine worked for your new manager and had nothing but good to say . So hats off and good luck.