Laid off from LyondellBasell.

What LyondellBasell layoffs have meant for employees

If LyondellBasell has put a closing date on your unit, the Houston refinery shows how much can happen between the announcement and the last shift. The company told the refinery's staff in April 2022, in a step its April 2022 8-K recorded, that operations would cease no later than December 31, 2023, and the plant kept running until February 2025, when Reuters reported the Texas filing that set that April's layoffs. That's nearly three years from the first notice to the layoff date in the filing, and the end date itself slid by more than a year. If a closing date has been set for your unit, it's worth planning both for that date and for the chance it moves, the way the refinery's did.

In 2008 and 2009 the cuts weren't tied to one site. The reorganization in Lyondell's 2008 third-quarter report could touch production and office facilities anywhere outside the company's fastest-growing regions, and once Lyondell Chemical, Equistar and other affiliates filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2009, notices followed from sites across Texas, from Beaumont to Corpus Christi, about half of them for fewer than 10 jobs. Equistar's February 2009 release gave the reasoning at Chocolate Bayou, where about 220 jobs were to go, and a LyondellBasell vice president explained that the company couldn't keep staffing at its old levels while the plant sat idle. In a year like that, a small notice at one plant could be one of 39, so a single site's count said little about how deep the cuts ran.

The 2025 cuts came from two directions at once. The cash improvement plan announced that April had three parts, deferring capital spending, cutting working capital and reducing fixed costs, and the last of those reached jobs. LyondellBasell's 2025 annual report attributes the year's roughly 7% fall in headcount to that plan and the refinery's shutdown together, and it ties $32 million of 2025 severance costs to the plan. With the company counting on more savings in 2026 and naming cuts to employees among the ways fixed costs may come down, a cost drive can reach a job at a plant that isn't closing.

In Europe the company has both sold businesses and closed plants, and the two aren't the same for the people in them. A sale hands a site's business to a new owner, as at Berre, Münchsmünster, Carrington and Tarragona on May 1, 2026, according to LyondellBasell's second-quarter 2026 filing, while a closing ends the work there, as with the Dutch propylene oxide joint venture the company shut during 2025. Brindisi's closing is a plan LyondellBasell announced in June, and union sources told Argus it depended on no acceptable alternative turning up.

The company's layoffs don't always carry its name. Equistar Chemicals, whose parent company the News-Gazette named as LyondellBasell, is the filer on 19 of the tracker's filings, and Lyondell Chemical on 13, with others from Houston Refining and from A. Schulman, which LyondellBasell finished buying in August 2018, according to Powder & Bulk Solids. All of them are businesses LyondellBasell owns today, though four of the filings came before it owned the filer, Equistar's from 1999 and 2001 and A. Schulman's from 2003 and 2013. If a letter you got names Equistar, Houston Refining or A. Schulman, it came from a part of today's LyondellBasell.

Texas holds most of this record. Forty-one of the 46 tracker filings are Texas notices, and the company's Channelview and La Porte plants and its former Houston refinery all sit in the state, so for people who worked at them our Texas unemployment benefits page sets out how a claim is filed there. If LyondellBasell offers you both a transfer and separation benefits, as the News-Gazette reported it planned to for Tuscola's staff in 2021, it's worth weighing the new site's distance, pay and shift, and how declining it would affect the benefits, before you choose.

A sourced history of LyondellBasell layoffs

• June 2026, planned closing of the Brindisi polypropylene unit

  LyondellBasell told Argus it planned to close its remaining polypropylene production at Brindisi, Italy, by year-end, citing feedstock uncertainty and higher costs. A Uiltec union official said the unit had been offered for sale at a symbolic price.

• April 2025, cash improvement plan and a smaller workforce

  The plan aimed to defer capital spending, trim working capital and cut fixed costs. Among its 2025 fixed-cost results, LyondellBasell's 2025 annual report lists a 7% cut in the global workforce, about 1,350 employees, to the lowest level since 2018.

• February 2025, Houston refinery shutdown and layoff notice

  The refinery shut down that month, and the Texas filing Reuters reported set 345 layoffs for April 17, about 86% of the staff. About 70% of its roughly 400 employees were hourly and represented by the United Steelworkers.

• April 2022, decision to close the Houston refinery

  A board committee approved leaving refining, and on April 21 LyondellBasell notified refinery employees of a shutdown by the end of 2023. Personnel-related costs were put at about $80 million to $120 million, according to its April 2022 8-K.

• August 2021, Tuscola ethanol plant closing

  Equistar's Tuscola, Illinois, ethanol plant would close in phases, with production to stop Oct. 31, employees were told, and the News-Gazette reported they'd be offered positions at other LyondellBasell holdings along with separation benefits. LyondellBasell's Illinois notice is dated August 13.

• November 2019, closing A. Schulman's former Fairlawn headquarters

  LyondellBasell was closing A. Schulman's former headquarters in Fairlawn, Ohio, in what Plastics News called a final chapter there. Separately, A. Schulman filed a 43-job Ohio notice for Fairlawn that week, effective January 31, 2020.

• July 2019, closing two former A. Schulman plants

  Two plants that came with A. Schulman, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Houston, were slated to close, Powder & Bulk Solids reported, with 68 and about 20 jobs to be cut and their work moving to Evansville, Indiana.

• February 2009, Chocolate Bayou olefins plant idled in bankruptcy

  After Equistar, Lyondell Chemical and affiliates entered Chapter 11 in January, Equistar said in a February 2009 release that its Chocolate Bayou, Texas, olefins plant would stay idle indefinitely, announcing about 220 job cuts while planning to keep a core team.

• 2008, reorganization aimed at about 15 percent of jobs

  LyondellBasell planned a reorganization expected to shrink its total workforce by about 15 percent over 12 to 18 months, with possible effects on production and office sites in every region but the fastest-growing, Lyondell's third-quarter 2008 10-Q said.

What to do if you're laid off from LyondellBasell

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. LyondellBasell's biggest hubs: Texas. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what LyondellBasell's hub states run: Texas, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.