Sealmaster Bearings Will Close Aurora Factory

Sealmaster Bearings, one of the city's oldest major industrial plants, has announced plans to close and lay off most of its 180-person work force. The factory's parent company, St. Louis-based Emerson Electric, is moving the Sealmaster lines to a larger facility in Kentucky where the ball bearing parts made in Aurora are currently sent for assembly into larger industrial equipment. Consolidating the two operations will make the company be more cost-effective in the face of "competitive pressures, which have resulted in excess plant capacity" both in Aurora and Kentucky, said Emerson spokesman Dave Baldridge. Layoffs will likely start at the end of this year, Emerson officials said, and the plant should be closed by this time next year. Sealmaster, founded in Aurora 70 years ago, has about 30 salaried management employees, some of whom will be able to transfer to new jobs within the Emerson organization. Sealmaster's 150 hourly workers could apply for jobs in Kentucky or at other Emerson locations, the company said, but are not guaranteed anything. The United Auto Workers Local 1615 represents the hourly workers and was supposed to be negotiating a new contract for the workers this June. Instead, they will have to negotiate terms for the layoff, such as severance pay. Union leaders declined to comment, and an Emerson spokesman said the company is keeping its discussions with the union private. Former union president Joe Wolf, who retired from the company after 46 years, said the plant closure was not a total surprise. "People have been expecting it," Wolf said. "The company's been downsizing for the last 20 years. ... They started moving our process down (to Kentucky) in the 1980s." Still, former employees said they were saddened at the news of the layoffs, particularly because many Sealmaster workers have been at the plant for decades and might have a hard time starting over in today's shrinking manufacturing sector. Sealmaster, founded in the late 1930s as a division of now-defunct Stephens-Adamson, was one of many factories that made Aurora famous as an industrial town for much of the 20th century, the type of place where blue-collar workers could build well-paying careers. Mechanization and low-wage foreign competition have been draining such jobs out of the Fox Valley for decades, including at Sealmaster. Former employee Lillian Perry recalled the days when more than 800 workers kept the sprawling factory on Bilter Road running round-the-clock. For 30 years (until her retirement a decade ago), Sealmaster was a good place to work, Perry said. "They had nice education programs," that let her take college classes after work. Sealmaster was purchased in 1983 by Emerson, which has since grown to be a major global industrial company ranking 115th in Fortune magazine's list of America's largest companies. Emerson saw record profits in 2007 and sales of more than $20 billion. Emerson considered relocating the Sealmaster plant to Kentucky as early as 1987, but negotiations with the union for a new, cheaper contract kept the plant open and limited layoffs. The company spent $6.5 million in 1990 to boost efficiency at the Aurora plant by computerizing the machinery and retraining workers.