Bristol-based Theis Precision Steel USA is laying off about 30 of its 35 workers and will idle its plant of more than 300,000 square feet, the company told city officials Tuesday.
Neither Theis executives nor UAW Local 712 officials could be reached for comment Tuesday. Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said the company and union had confirmed the layoffs to her, but said the future of the business is unclear.
“The company said it is idling its plant, not closing it. We had been hearing they had closed, but that’s not the case,” she said Tuesday afternoon.
The city’s economic development office will be available to work with Theis owners to assess the needs of the laid off workers and to coordinate information about retraining, new employment possibilities short-term health care options, she said.
Theis, which produces precision steel products to an international market, operates in a complex on 26 acres between Broad Street and the Pequabuck River. About half of the buildings date to the World War I era, and most of the remaining space was built just after World War II.
The business began as a division of the Bristol-based Barnes Group, but was acquired by the Theis Group in 1986. The German ownership built the operation to a high point in the late 1990s when it employed more than 225 workers, ran three production shifts and was one of Bristol’s three biggest taxpayers.
Theis built an addition in 1996 with a 150-foot-tall tower to accommodate vertical manufacturing, and the city gave it $50,000 in job-creation incentives. The company was supplying customers in ther automotive, medical and construction industries among others, and predicted the vertical production capability would build new business.
But it was in layoff mode by 2001, with executives saying the steel industry across the United States had suffered a severe downturn. Theis continued losing jobs since then. A few years later it did away with its third shift, and by 2013 it was down to roughly 90 workers.
Local business leaders began speculating about its future not long after its German parent company sold the operation to TPS Acquisitions, a local investment group, in January 2014.
TPS notified unionized employees of the decision on Monday, and by Tuesday morning social media was abuzz with arguments alternately blaming former Democrats and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy or Republicans and President Donald Trump.
