(The Associated Press circulated the following story on December 16.)
DULUTH, Minn. — The scheduled reopening of the bankrupt EVTAC Mining Co. isn’t just putting out-of-work mine and factory workers back on the lines.
About 65 laid-off Duluth Missabe and Iron Range Railway Co. workers are scheduled to get their jobs back by spring to handle the transportation of taconite pellets from United Taconite, formerly EVTAC.
With the closing of the plant in May, 86 workers were erased from the payroll at DM&IR. The company had served the taconite plant since it opened in 1965. EVTAC was the rail company’s second-largest customer in terms of revenue and largest in sheer tonnage.
Pete Stephenson, DM&IR vice president and general manager, said Monday that 20 DM&IR employees have already been recalled as the railroad and Iron Range taconite plant gear up for pellet production next week. Another 45 employees were projected to return to work when the shipping season resumes in the spring.
DM&IR crews hauled the first trainloads of crude ore Monday from United Taconite’s mine in Eveleth to its processing plant, about 10 miles south in Forbes.
Eight round trips will be made each day between the mine and processing plant to fill storage bins at United Taconite.
“That’s essentially the full plan for hauling crude ore,” Stephenson said. “We will be running a full complement of trains for the week. It’s a terrific piece of news for us.”
Officials of Cleveland-Cliffs and Laiwu Steel, which bought the taconite plant Nov. 25 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, hope to begin producing taconite pellets at the 38-year-old facility Monday.
Through Monday, about 270 hourly workers had been called back to work at the taconite plant, said Joe Strlekar, president of United Steelworkers of America Local 6860 at United Taconite. A total of 320 hourly workers should be back at the plant next week, he said.
The plant’s pelletizing furnaces are scheduled to be fired up over the weekend, and will be ready to make pellets on Monday, said Dana Byrne, a Cleveland-Cliffs spokesman.
Restarting the taconite plant is expected to help offset employment cuts planned next year under a takeover of the DM&IR by the Canadian National Railway Co. About 94 jobs in Duluth and Proctor were to be lost by mid-2004.