As Yokohama prepares to close Salem plant, workers consider what’s next

Christopher Reynolds worked for Yokohama Tire in Salem for 30 years. A division manager who oversees more than 100 employees, Reynolds expected to retire from the company.

He’s had to come up with new plans.

The Salem tire plant is expected to shut down March 18, leaving more than 500 employees out of jobs.

On Thursday, Reynolds felt confident that he would be OK, but he worried about his coworkers who don’t have college degrees.

“You’ve got guys that do manual labor, and I mean with overtime and everything, they’re making $100,000 a year,” Reynolds said. “For them to replace that … it’s few and far between to find jobs like that.”

For weeks, Reynolds has been sitting down with employees to talk through what’s next.

“I’m trying to help my people,” he said. “I’ve even given them bullet points of things we’ve accomplished together as a team so that they could put that on their resume …  whatever I can do to help them land on their feet.”

He and about 170 other job hunters turned out Thursday at the Salem Civic Center for a job fair targeting Yokohama workers organized by the Greater Roanoke Workforce Development Board, Virginia Career Works and the city of Salem. At the event, representatives from dozens of companies and organizations talked with job seekers about openings, training programs and other opportunities.

Expected plant closure

Organizers planned the job fair — the second of two — following Yokohama Tire’s Jan. 16 distribution of a news release stating that the company planned to lay off 392 hourly and salaried employees at the Salem facility by mid-March. The company acknowledged in that release it was considering shutting down the plant altogether.

If that happened, according to a notice sent to the state in January, 533 workers would be out of work.

Yokohama has not publicly given a date the Salem plant will close.

“A tentative agreement has been reached with the union and we are continuing to work out the details,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement Monday.

However, United Steelworkers Local 1023, which represents workers at the facility, announced on social media Feb. 20 that it had reached a deal with Yokohama, and the plant would close March 18.

Tommy Miller, Salem’s economic development director, said that’s the date the city has heard.

“The company here was a giant that supported also a lot of other local businesses in Salem as well as the Roanoke Valley,” Miller said. “We’re trying to reach out to those vendors that might be affected.”

Miller’s other priority is helping Yokohama workers find new jobs.

“You take the good with the bad,” Miller said. “When these bads come along, they can hopefully be absorbed with the success.”

Eventually, the city will switch its focus to the facility Yokohama leaves behind.

“We will certainly be working with them on … a strategy to evaluate the building and then properly market it,” Miller said.

Mohawk Rubber opened the Salem plant in 1968. Yokohama Tire acquired the company about three decades later. The facility employed 1,050 workers at its peak in 1996, according to the city of Salem.

In 2023, company executives and Salem officials celebrated the 100 millionth Yokohama tire rolling off the line at the Salem plant.

In its January news release, Yokohama explained executives were looking at closing the plant “in light of rapidly changing customer requirements and dynamic market conditions.”

“The Salem facility is not well equipped to manufacture Yokohama’s required product mix or achieve the company’s manufacturing objectives in the future,” the release stated.

At Thursday’s job fair, James Clark and John Zirkle, who work at the Salem plant as tire finishers/classifiers, shared their own opinions about why the plant is closing. Both men pointed to Yokohama building a plant for consumer and light truck tires in Mexico as the cause they suspected. It’s slated to begin production in 2027.

In 2015, Yokohama opened a $300 million commercial tire plant in Mississippi.

“They decided they’re going to build new plants instead of updating our machines,” Clark said.

Moving forward

Across the civic center, Abigail Bates, a quality assurance analyst for Yokohama, was among the job seekers at Thursday’s job fair. She’s expecting her first baby in June.

“It’s a lot of stress,” she said.

Bates felt confident, though, that she’ll be able to find an employer willing to work around a school schedule. She plans to start classes at Virginia Western Community College in August.

“That’s like my main focus, trying to get that done,” said Bates, who hopes to one day be an occupational or physical therapist. “Because if I finish that, then I don’t really have to stress about anything anymore.”

Zirkle and Clark also seemed positive about what’s ahead.

Clark has worked at the Salem facility for 28 years; Zirkle for 18. Both said they will receive good severance packages.

“If you’re in the union, they’re going to fight for you if something like this happens,” Clark said.

Neither man expected to find a new job making what he did at Yokohama, but both have made their peace with that. Mostly, the pair are searching for jobs that offer health insurance but aren’t too taxing on the body. “Something where we’re not killing ourselves,” Clark said.

“We’re not young bucks anymore,” Zirkle added.

Sweden-based Munters, a manufacturer of cooling systems for data centers, was among the companies meeting with job seekers Thursday.

The company plans to open a 200,000-square-foot expansion this summer at the Botetourt Center at Greenfield and will need about 400 employees, according to Lea Felty, a talent acquisition specialist for Munters.

Yokohoma Tire employees would be a good fit for Munters, Felty said.

“They loved their jobs,” she said. “They were loyal. And that’s something we’re looking for at Munters: loyal people that want to grow within our company.”

Marty Lovelace worked at the Salem Yokohama plant for 39 years. He spent the bulk of that time, three decades, working in quality control. He tested and analyzed rubber in the lab, he said.

As treasurer for Local 1023, Lovelace has stayed busy since Yokohama announced the company could be shuttering in January. He said on Monday he hasn’t had time to think about what life will look like once the plant closes. He did show up for the job fair last week, though.

“I didn’t have a resume, and I ain’t had time because I’ve been doing all this union stuff. … Plus, I’ve never had a resume in my life,” he said.

Lovelace is open to getting another job. He has his real estate license. He’s been an EMT for three decades.

“I’ve done pretty good with managing my money,” he said. “I’ve got some rental property.”

Reynolds, a Yokohama veteran of three decades, is in a similar boat. His financial adviser told him he can retire now if he wants. But he’s not ready.

“I’m a very motivated individual, and I’m not done,” he said. “I’m not finished making my mark in the world.”

Reynolds felt good about attending Thursday’s job fair.

“This is a great environment because you get to speak to someone face-to-face,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re submitting a resume online, hoping somebody picks your resume out of a stack.”

Both Reynolds and Lovelace went out of their way to say they didn’t have bad feelings toward Yokohama.

“I’ve had a good living,” said Lovelace.

While he worked at the company, Reynolds earned a bachelor’s degree in organizational management and development from Bluefield College (now Bluefield University) and an MBA from Pfeiffer University. Yokohama, he said, “paid for a good part of it.”

The company once also sent him to Japan for 30 days.

“They got me an apartment there,” he said. “I went around to all the plants there and studied the manufacturing process and brought back information to the Salem plant.”

Still, Lovelace feels some grief about the plant shuttering.

“I’ve never known anything else,” he said.  “I would have liked to been able to have a situation where … it was all my terms when I left,” he said.