Amsted Rail Company is a name that most of you are probably not that familiar with, unless you spend a lot of time thinking about how freight gets from point A to point B that is. Before we talk about the jobs that are going to be cut in the near future lets begin by taking a look at how the company has chosen to describe itself, “Amsted Rail Company is the world’s leading manufacturers of undercarriage railcar components for heavy haul freight railcars. The company focuses on providing complete system solutions, such as: railcar truck systems trucks/bogies, wheels, bearings, axles) and end of car energy management systems (couplers, yokes, draft gears, cast draft sills, cushioning units) for heavy haul railways around the world. In addition, Amsted Rail Company provides rail fastening solutions and asset monitoring (GPS & Condition Based Monitoring) solutions for transit and heavy haul rail.”

Sadly the company is getting ready to cut back on 94 workers in a move to cut its costs. These kinds of job cuts are enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” The only good news about a mass layoff action is the fact that the workers must be given several weeks of notice before they are cut from the payrolls. In this case the workers will be put out of their jobs in December.

In a recent release the company chose not to talk about the job losses, but to highlight a new deal made by the company. Here is an excerpt from that release, “Ellcon National, 100% owned subsidiary of Faiveley Transport, and Amsted Rail, world leading manufacturer for undercarriage rail components for the freight market, announce the creation of a joint venture. “This new joint venture is strategically important because it will enable heavy haul railcar customers to purchase complete systems with a wider range of components from a single supplier” said Robert Joyeux, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Faiveley Transport. “Ellcon National’s existing brake component portfolio will be integrated with Amsted Rail’s extensive undercarriage systems enabling railcar designers and their customers to access an unprecedented component engineering team”, explains Mr. John Wories, President of Amsted Rail.”

As you can imagine this is not the only rail company to cut costs. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of job cuts to the Alaska Railroad Corporation here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “The Alaska Railroad Corporation is getting ready to get rid of 52 of its workers in order to put their budget to right. That is enough to qualify as a mass layoff action… The company is blaming the layoffs on the economic downturn and a decrease in the number of runs that the line has to make in order to bring fuel and other good out of Alaska as people and companies spend less.”