Logan Brazek
As part of the global assault on jobs, PPG Industries announced the layoff of 1,800 workers or four percent of its entire workforce throughout the United States and Europe. After a decrease in net profit, the Fortune 500 company is pursuing major cost adjustments at the expense of its employees.
As one of the largest paint and coating manufacturers in the world, PPG employs over 50,000 workers, including nearly 18,000 in North America, 17,000 in Europe, and 15,000 throughout Asia and Latin America.
The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company has not announced where the layoffs are taking place, but it is expected that they will be conducted across their operations.
The layoffs coincide with the company’s decision to sell its architectural coatings business to a private equity firm, American Industrial Partners, for nearly $550 million. Producing major brands such as Liquid Nails, Glidden, and Olympic, this section of PPG alone produced $2 billion in net sales last year. The company also initiated a deal with Poland-based QEMETICA S.A. for the sale of its silica products business for $310 million in August.
More than 6,000 workers in manufacturing facilities and distribution centers in Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Nevada, Texas, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico and Canada will be transferred to American Industrial Partners once the sale transaction with the company is completed.
American Industrial Partners specializes in investing in American manufacturing and “cutting debt and improving operations,” according to company information. “Improving operations” is often code words for layoffs and the cutting of wages and benefits.
PPG is hoping that the job cuts and sales will satisfy the Wall Street investors. PPG has been underperforming both the Standard & Poor’s Composite 500 Stock Index as well as a defined Peer Group of stocks for the past 10 years.
In a recent press announcement, PPG officials stated that the layoffs and the sale of sections of the company will “deliver $175 million once fully implemented, including saving of $60 million in 2025.”
PPG has been steadily firing or laying off IT workers and temporary workers throughout the year. A post on the web site TheLayoff.com from earlier this year stated, “I’m an Uber driver. Today I picked up a temporary worker from a Chicagoland PPG plant. He told me that they laid off a large number of temporary workers from the PPG facility he works at... Sounds to me that many factories have been hiring temporary workers since Covid. It’s easier to fire or layoff temp employees and in Illinois I doubt they have to pay workers comp for temp workers.”
Other posts read: “IT got clobbered back in May—I hope this stops at some point,” “Another April 30 IT layoff victim reporting in,” and “It just happened in IT yesterday. I was part of a fair size reduction in force.”
Although it is known that the new layoffs will be taking place throughout North America and Europe, the timing and precise locations were not immediately disclosed. When asked for specifics by Pittsburgh’s Action News 4, PPG spokesperson Mark Silvey stated, “The program is not focused on a specific location or business, but instead will target structural cost reductions across PPG global businesses.”
Formally called Pittsburgh Plate Glass, the company was founded in 1883 by Captain John B. Ford and John Pitcairn and focused on glass production. In 1968, it changed its name to PPG Industries, as part of its shift to global production.
In the mid-2000s, the company began selling off its glass and chemical production plants and by 2016 had completely transitioned away from being primarily a glass manufacturer to a global supplier of paints and coatings. By revenue, PPG is the largest coatings company in the world followed by Sherwin-Williams.
With the layoffs and the sale of its home painting business, PPG officials have told investors they want to focus on providing products for the aerospace and military industries.
It is no coincidence that the layoffs at PPG are coinciding with the mass layoffs that are taking place in the auto industry. Workers throughout the world are losing their jobs as companies take advantage of the shift to electric vehicles and automated technology to lower labor costs and increase profits for the ultra-rich.
Tens of thousands of Stellantis employees in Italy recently went on strike in response to the company’s threats to wipe out up to 25,000 jobs. In recent weeks, thousands of Stellantis workers have been laid off in Toledo, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan and Kokomo, Indiana. VW workers in Germany face the closure of three plants, tens of thousands of layoffs and pay cuts up to 20 percent for the 120,000 VW workers in the country.
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