A southeast Iowa legislator is questioning why ads are being run in Texas to hire workers for the construction of the Iowa Fertilizer Plant in Wever.
Orascom, an Egyptian company, is getting about half a billion dollars in local, state and federal incentives for construction of the plant. Senator Tom Courtney, a Democrat from Burlington, says over half of the 25-hundred construction workers on the site were laid off recently when Orascom fired the main subcontractor on the project.
“In Texas, there’s a posting up down there from a non-union company that said come to Iowa, lots of great jobs at the fertilizer plant in Iowa from now until about probably Christmas,” Courtney says.
Bond holders were notified last week that a company hired to work on electrical and mechanical elements in the fertilizer plant was fired on Friday, April 17th. Three other subcontractors already working on site were hired to complete the work. Richie Schmidt of the Laborers International Union of North America expects non-union labor will be hired.
“The 1480 members that were just laid off overnight in Wever, Iowa, last week — they are now sitting without jobs right now,” Schmidt said. “They don’t know where the next job’s going to come from. They are going to be replaced with other workers from out of state. That’s what we’re hearing down there.”
Senator Courtney says despite the tens of millions the state awarded Orascom, there’s nothing legislators can do to stop non-Iowans getting most of the construction jobs at the plant.
“I just think that’s wrong and I think the Iowa taxpayers are paying a lot of money to an Egypian company to hire people from other states,” Courtney says.
According to a memo Orascom sent to the Iowa Finance Authority, one of the three subcontractors hired to step in and complete the electrical and mechanical work is based in Iowa. The company says in “projects of this size” it is common to “exchange subcontractors. Construction of the nearly one-and-a-half billion dollar Iowa Fertilizer Plant is scheduled to be completed late this year.
