Gamesa Cut 73 Jobs

When you first hear the name Gamesa what do you think they do? Did you think that they make video games? Well, they don’t. For those of you who are not quite sure here is a look at how the company has chosen to describe itself, “With more than 18 years’ experience, Gamesa is a global technological leader in the wind industry. Its comprehensive response includes the design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of wind turbines, with more than 24,000 MW installed and 16,300 MW under maintenance. Gamesa is also a world leader in the development, construction and sale of wind farms, having installed over 5,000 MW and having a portfolio of 24,000 MW in Europe, America and Asia. It also maintains a strong commitment to the offshore wind energy segment, through technological and industrial development, which will evolve in the next few years parallel to the market’s needs. Gamesa has about 30 production centres throughout Europe, the United States, China, India and Brazil, and more than 8,000 employees world wide.”

The company is getting ready to get rid of about 73 workers, and while that is not enough to even constitute one percent of the overall workers that the company employs it is still 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.”

Interestingly enough this is not the only cash saving measure that the company has undertaken in the recent past. The most recent news release put out by the company was about the sale of one of its assets. In that release the company said the following about the sale, “Gamesa, global wind power technology leader, has signed an agreement with RWE Renewables Polska, the Polish subsidiary of Germany energy company RWE Innogy GMBH, for the sale of the 14 M. Gamesa developed and built this wind farm which comprises seven Gamesa G90-2.0 MW turbines. Each year, these turbines have the capacity to produce some 30,000 megawatt-hours of electricity. This is sufficient to power the equivalent of over 15,000 households in Poland and prevent the emission of some 30,000 tonnes of CO2.  This agreement marks the second agreement reached between the two companies in the wind energy market, Gamesa having sold RWE Innogy a 32 MW wind farm in Poland 18 months ago. “

For the time being the company has not given out any specifics about what kind of a severance package, if any, the company is planning to offer workers.