AUBURN — Minneapolis, Minn.–based Daikin Applied on Thursday announced it will keep its Auburn plant open through 2015, representing a “one-year delay.”
The company also said that 51 employees will not be laid off in 2013 as originally planned.
Daikin Applied is the largest air conditioning, heating, ventilating and refrigeration company in the world, according to its website. The company is part of Osaka, Japan–based Daikin Industries, Ltd., its site says.
The firm, then known as Daikin McQuay, announced on Feb. 20 plans to close the Auburn plant, which employs about 300 people total, by the end of 2014.
It also negotiated a plant-closing agreement with the United Steelworkers Local 32, which represents the Auburn production and maintenance employees, the company said in a news release.
The firm’s decision to close the Auburn plant “will not be reconsidered,” but Daikin Applied believes the one-year delay is “good news” for the Auburn employees and community, saying “it effectively gives the employees an additional year of earnings and the community additional time to attract a new employer to the area through various economic-development resources.”
The one-year delay will provide Auburn “more time to find an opportunity for reuse of the building,” Andrew Fish, director of the Cayuga County Chamber of Commerce and the Cayuga Economic Development Agency, said in the Daikin Applied news release.
The firm will support the Steelworkers’ efforts to help employees get certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits available through the U.S. Department of Labor, according to its news release.
Daikin Applied has notified the Steelworkers’ union that the plant is staying open through 2015 and has offered to negotiate possible amendments to the plant-closing agreement it negotiated earlier this year, it said.
Until those negotiations are completed, no further details will be made public at this time, the company added.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com