Iowa Fertilizer responds to labor concerns

Wever, Iowa — After concerns about layoffs and the procurement of out-of-state non-union labor at Iowa Fertilizer Co. here (GM May 11, p. 14), Iowa Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham facilitated a meeting between Iowa Fertilizer President Shawn Rana and building trade representatives May 8. Rana stressed Iowa Fertilizer’s hiring of both Iowans and union members. “Iowa Fertilizer has been investing in Iowa throughout the construction phase of the project. In fact, since construction began on the Iowa Fertilizer plant, Lee County’s unemployment rate has decreased from 11 percent in 2011 to under six percent in March of 2015. Further, Iowa Fertilizer committed to hiring 165 permanent positions in Iowa; to date, 195 permanent employees have been hired.” As for the recent layoffs, he noted that the company’s Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor reassigned work from a San Francisco-based contractor to multiple contractors, including one of the eight Iowa-based contractors onsite. Rana said the contractor who received the largest share of the work is a Davenport, Iowa-based union contractor and that the subcontractors who received the reassigned work are now in place and have been ramping up to rehire the skilled tradesmen that are critical to the construction work at the facility. “By the completion of the project, we anticipate that 78 percent of the project will have been completed by union workers,” he added. He said that although it is outside Iowa Fertilizer and the EPC contractor’s control, at this stage the EPC contractor expects the number of Iowa-based temporary workers after the reassignment of subcontractors to meet, if not exceed, the number of temporary Iowa-based workers before the reassignment. In related news, OCI NV, Iowa Fertilizer’s parent, sees no delay in the project’s timeline, telling analysts April 29 that it expects the ammonia plant to ramp up in September with production in October, followed by urea, UAN, and DEF later in the year.