Laid off from Timken.

What Timken layoffs have meant for employees

Two of the plants whose closings Timken announced were ones it had only recently bought. It completed its purchase of Diamond Chain on April 1, 2019 and announced the Indianapolis chain plant's closing about 10 months later, as Timken's 10-K for 2022 records, and it announced the Hiddenite closing about two years after finishing its purchase of American Roller Bearing, as its filing for 2025 records. Both times the work was headed to plants Timken already ran, its Fulton, Illinois chain plant and its other U.S. bearing plants, so the site Timken chose to close was the one that had recently changed hands. If your workplace came to Timken through a purchase, those two closings are the record of how soon Timken has moved to close a plant it bought.

Timken's recent closings were planned as gradual wind-downs rather than one last day for everyone. Gaffney's plant kept running for about 11 months after its closing was announced and Fort Scott's for roughly two years, and at Indianapolis the first layoffs were expected nearly 22 months after the announcement. For Gaffney and Fort Scott Timken committed to a minimum of 60 days' notice ahead of each person's last day, according to WSPA and KOAM, and its letter to Indiana said Diamond Chain's layoffs could come in stages, with a 60-day notice to each employee as their position was eliminated. Springfield's 2026 notice, as European Rubber Journal reported it, expected layoffs from August to December. The day a plant shuts and the day your own job ends can sit months apart, so if a personal notice gives you a last day, you can work back from that date when you weigh another job or a move.

Timken's support at Gaffney and Fort Scott included retention pay. If a retention offer names a date to stay through and you're weighing a job with an earlier start, you can set the two dates side by side before you decide. At the Diamond Chain plant, the procedure attached to Timken's letter set out how open jobs would be filled and how bumping would work, weighing qualifications and seniority as the union contract defined them, first within a department and then across the plant. If you work under a contract with a process like that, your seniority date and the job classifications you're qualified for are what it weighs.

Timken's notices since 2023 were filed in South Carolina, Kansas, North Carolina and Missouri, the states where those plants sit, and the belts plants' notices stay with Timken after the Gates sale because Timken shut Fort Scott and announced Springfield's closing itself. Diamond Chain's 2021 Indiana notice carries only the unit's own name, so a state WARN list searched only for Timken can miss a notice that our WARN tracker counts. The state rules for an unemployment claim are on Missouri unemployment benefits and Kansas unemployment benefits for the belts plants, and on South Carolina unemployment benefits and North Carolina unemployment benefits for the bearing plants.

Timken has tied these cuts to its manufacturing footprint and to demand. It was closing Gaffney to streamline operations and restructure its manufacturing footprint to compete in the global market, as WSPA reported, and it gave KOAM the same reason for Fort Scott. The 2025 Springfield cut rested on long-term capacity planning and demand, a spokesperson said, according to Manufacturing Dive, and Timken put its 2020 cuts to salaried jobs down to customer demand as well. If one of those layoffs was yours and you're explaining it to an interviewer, you can point to the reason Timken gave for that one, and there's more on that part of a job search in how to talk about a layoff.

A sourced history of Timken layoffs

• April 2026, Springfield, Missouri belts plant closing

  Timken announced the closing on April 30, a day after agreeing to sell its belts business to Gates, and its June 2026 10-Q says the plant isn't part of that sale; the May 2 notice covered 283 jobs, per our WARN tracker.

• February 2025, Hiddenite, North Carolina plant closing

  Timken announced on February 20 that it would close the Hiddenite plant; production there stopped in the third quarter and moved to other U.S. bearing plants, affecting about 60 employees, per Timken's 2025 Form 10-K.

• December 2024, Springfield belts plant workforce cut

  Timken announced the reduction on December 6, per its 10-K filing for 2025; a spokesperson told KSMU the plant's workforce would shrink 40% over 2025, and the January notice listed 97 permanent layoffs, 91 of them union workers.

• November 2023, Fort Scott, Kansas belts plant closing

  Timken notified the plant's 155 employees on November 30 of plans to close it in 2025, promising retention and severance pay among other support, a spokesperson told KOAM; operations ended late in 2025, per its 2025 annual filing.

• January 2023, Gaffney, South Carolina plant closing

  Timken told Gaffney's 225 employees on January 16 that their plant would close, offering retention and severance pay and a chance to apply at other Timken locations, according to WSPA; operations ceased at the end of 2023, per its 2025 10-K filing.

• February 2020, Indianapolis Diamond Chain plant closing

  Timken announced on February 4 that it would close the Indianapolis plant, expecting about 240 employees to be affected, and move the Diamond Chain line to Fulton, Illinois, per its 2022 annual filing; its letter to Indiana expected first layoffs on November 26, 2021.

• October 2019, Gaffney bearing plant reorganization

  In a reorganization finished by the end of 2021, Timken moved the Gaffney plant's high-volume bearing and roller production to other U.S. Timken plants, affecting about 150 employees, per its 2022 Form 10-K.

What to do if you're laid off from Timken

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Timken's biggest hubs: Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas. 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 Timken's hub states run: Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas, 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.