Laid off from Kennametal.

What Kennametal layoffs have meant for employees

Kennametal has described its company-wide cost actions in dollars, a savings goal and a charge, in its June 2023 filing and its January 2025 filing, while its June 2020 filing set that year's reduction as a share of salaried employees around the world. The 2025 filing named the Greenfield plant and the two Barcelona sites, then described the rest of the round only as removing "certain professional headcount." Greenfield's own headcount came from a state notice logged in our WARN tracker and from the Greenfield Recorder, which counted roughly 45 workers when operations ended. To tell whether a Kennametal program includes your job, you can look for your plant's name in the company's filing or a state notice for your site. The 2020 and 2025 filings named salaried and professional staff, by share or by type of job, and the 2016 cut, by Tribune News Service's account, was measured against the whole global workforce, with layoffs and voluntary buyouts counted together.

Greenfield's sequence is worth knowing if your plant turns up in a filing. Kennametal filed in January 2025, and chief shop steward Shawn Coates said workers were told of the closing that month. The Massachusetts notice is dated February 12. Its April 15 effective date turned out to be the day operations ended, while eight people stayed on toward June 30. Because the filing had made the April shutdown subject to negotiations with local employee representatives, the date was still open when the closing was announced, and in the end the date in the notice held. If you're at a Kennametal plant and watching for that kind of sequence, our piece on signs that a layoff is coming covers the earlier signals.

In three of the closings it announced, Kennametal said other plants of its own would take the work. Grant, Alabama's operations were to move to other Kennametal locations in North America to better align the company's supply chain footprint with customer needs, according to S&P Capital IQ. Most of Irwin, Pennsylvania's work was headed to a newly modernized plant in Rogers, Arkansas, under the July 2019 release, and Johnson City's work was going to other newly modernized plants, the August 2020 results release said. None of those three announcements says whether the people could move with the work. If your plant's products are headed to another Kennametal site, the destination the company names gives you something concrete for weighing whether following the work could be practical for you.

Lyndonville and Greenfield, two of the U.S. plants Kennametal moved to close, were union shops. Lyndonville's workers were represented by the United Steelworkers, and a company spokesperson said, in a Caledonian Record story VTDigger republished, that Kennametal would work with Local 5518 and government officials on resources for them. At Greenfield, the company's communications director made the same kind of pledge about working with the local union in January 2025. The union tried bargaining over the package, and committee member Eric Dietz said the company was "standing steady," which left severance at the rate Coates gave the Recorder. "We're lucky we got anything, actually," Dietz said. If you're comparing a Kennametal offer with what other employers pay, the Greenfield committee's own check of three area businesses is a method you can repeat with employers near you, with negotiating a severance agreement as a place to see which other terms are open to talks.