CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Cleveland-Cliffs announced Thursday its West Virginia tin production facility will be shutting down indefinitely and plans to lay off 900 workers.

The news created a sense of unease for workers at the Butler Township plant.

Jamie Sychak, president of the UAW Local 3303, said Thursday recent governmental decisions don’t bode well for industrial operations around the nation, and the jobs they support.

“There is a general feeling that it’s a similar circumstance,” Sychak said. “My personal feeling is that this is another lack of action or inaction by our government to pass laws that keep things operating.

“Now, we’re losing that battle.”

The news release announcing the closure of the plant, located in Weirton in the state’s northern panhandle, comes after the International Trade Commission voted against imposing tariffs on tin imports.

The trade commission ruled earlier this year that no anti-dumping and countervailing duties will be imposed on tin products from Canada, China and Germany because those imports do not sufficiently harm the U.S. steel industry. The U.S. Department of Commerce had determined those products were sold in the United States at less than fair value and were subsidized by the Chinese government.

The trade commission also voted to stop a duty investigation into tin products shipped from South Korea.

Anti-dumping and countervailing duties are levied against foreign governments that subsidize products so they can be sold below cost.

Cleveland-Cliffs said it will offer effected workers either severance packages or opportunities to be relocated to other facilities. The Cleveland-based company employs 28,000 workers in the United States and Canada.

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-16th, this month sponsored the Distribution Transformer Efficiency & Supply Chain Reliability Act of 2024, co-sponsored by Reps. Chris Deluzio, D-17th; Dan Meuser, R-9th; Susan Wild, D-7th; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-1st; Guy Reschenthaler, R-14th; and Lloyd Smucker, R-11th; and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas.

The bipartisan bill is designed to bolster the U.S. transformer supply chain by setting “realistic” energy efficiency standards that would keep domestic transformer manufacturing steady, including products made at Cleveland-Cliffs’ Butler Works plant.

Kelly said Thursday the closing of the Weirton plant prompted him to get in touch with Cleveland-Cliffs administrators.

“My team and I have been made aware of the news about Cleveland-Cliffs’ West Virginia plant. I will continue to be in touch with Cleveland-Cliffs officials about this news,” Kelly said. “We will fight like hell to protect the 1,300 jobs at the Butler Works plant.”

Weirton is a city of 19,000 residents along the Ohio River about 40 miles west of Pittsburgh.

Cleveland-Cliffs chairman, president and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said the company and the United Steelworkers union “fought tirelessly” to keep the Weirton plant open.

“In what was our final effort to maintain tinplate production here in America, we proved that we are forced to operate on an uneven playing field, and that the deck was stacked in favor of the importers,” Goncalves said in a statement. The trade commission ruling was shocking and made it “impossible for us to viably produce tinplate.”

Goncalves said the trade commission’s decision “is a travesty for America, middle-class jobs, and our critical food supply chains. This bad outcome requires better and stronger trade laws. We will continue to work tirelessly with our Congressional champions who fought with us in this case to improve the trade laws so that the American industry and our workers are not left behind.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said the trade commission turned “a blind eye” to Cleveland-Cliffs workers.

The plant’s closing “is an absolute injustice not only to American workers, but to the very principle of fair competition, and it will undoubtedly weaken our economic and national security,” Manchin said.

The announcement is the latest blow for the steel industry in West Virginia. In 2022, Cleveland-Cliffs announced the closing of a coke-making facility that employed about 280 workers in Follansbee.

Cleveland-Cliffs' tin facility in Weirton was once a nearly 800-acre property operated by Weirton Steel, which employed 6,100 workers in 1994 and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003.

International Steel Group bought Weirton Steel in federal bankruptcy court in 2003. The property changed hands again a few years later, ultimately ending up a part of Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, which sold its U.S. holdings to Cleveland-Cliffs in 2020.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she was “devastated” by the Cleveland-Cliffs announcement and that the trade commission's move to reverse the Commerce Department's decision on tin product duties “remains concerning and will be examined thoroughly.”

Eagle Staff Writer Eddie Trizzino contributed to this report.