Laid off from Westlake.

What Westlake layoffs have meant for employees

Westlake's closing announcements name the piece of a site that stops. The December 2025 8-K listed a PVC plant at the Aberdeen, Mississippi site, a VCM plant at Lake Charles North, one of the diaphragm chlor-alkali units at Lake Charles South and the Lake Charles styrene plant, and said customers would keep getting PVC, VCM and chlor-alkali products from seven other North American chlorovinyl plants. Pernis customers were to be supplied from Westlake's Deer Park, Texas plant under the plan in the June 2025 8-K. The products keep moving under those plans while the job losses follow the units that stop. For workers at a site where one unit was named and theirs wasn't, the filing's list marks which part of the plant the cut was aimed at.

The December dates landed close together without being the same. Westlake told employees on December 15 and expected the units to stop that month, and KPLC reported its head of communications saying the aim was to shut all three facilities down safely before the year was out, with the styrene plant running until sometime after Christmas. KPLC put the paid period for non-union workers at 60 days with benefits, and Mississippi's October to December 2025 WARN list gave the Aberdeen closing's date of action as February 2026. If your unit was one of those closed in December, it's worth keeping those dates apart, since the day work stopped, the state's date of action and the end of any paid period may fall on different days.

Representation changed the process. About 24% of Westlake's workforce is represented by labor unions, including works councils in Europe, a share its Form 10-K for 2025 gives for year-end. In December, KPLC reported, union employees' benefits were to be negotiated with the union. In Europe the June 2025 8-K and the September 2026 8-K record works council consultations on closing Pernis and Cologne before either plant was to stop. For members of a union or a works council, the representatives' updates on a closing are worth following as closely as the company's, since the December benefits for union members were left to negotiation.

The closing filings for the December units, Pernis and Cologne each carried a severance estimate and went public the day employees were told. Westlake put severance and separation costs at about $25 million for the December units, about EUR 30 million for Pernis and about $20 million for Cologne, inside closing costs of about $415 million for the December units alone, about $357 million of it non-cash charges. If you're offered severance after one of these closings, the filed figure is Westlake's company-wide estimate for the whole closing, which shows the cost was budgeted but not who qualifies or for how much.

The 2025 closings showed up in Westlake's workforce. On the fourth-quarter 2025 call, its chief executive, Jean-Marc Gilson, said they contributed to a reduction in headcount and an even larger one in the contractor workforce. They also reached the housing and infrastructure side, where his list included three fabrication sites. Earlier, in 2024, Westlake Royal Building Products filed a WARN notice covering jobs in Carrollton, Texas.

For a job at Lake Charles, Louisiana unemployment benefits covers that state's claims, and Aberdeen's state is covered at unemployment benefits in Mississippi. Anyone whose job was part of the Carrollton notice can start from Texas unemployment benefits.

A sourced history of Westlake layoffs

• September 2026, Cologne PVC plant closure announced

  Westlake approved closing its Cologne, Germany PVC plant on September 24 and told employees and works councils on September 29, and its September 2026 8-K expected about 120 jobs to go, with operations stopping in the first quarter of 2027.

• December 2025, Aberdeen and Lake Charles closures announced

  On December 15 Westlake told workers it would stop its Aberdeen, Mississippi PVC plant, a Lake Charles VCM plant, a chlor-alkali unit and its styrene plant that month, a cut its December 2025 8-K put at about 295 jobs.

• June 2025, Pernis plant closure in the Netherlands

  After a July 2024 plan to mothball two Pernis units, Westlake opened works council talks on June 13 on closing the whole site and told employees on June 17, a closing its June 2025 8-K expected to cost about 230 more jobs.

• October 2023, Westlake Royal Stone closure in Chester, South Carolina

  Westlake Royal Stone gave notice on October 17 that its Chester site on Ecology Lane would close permanently, a closing South Carolina's 2023 WARN report lists with 110 jobs ending December 18.

• 2019, Westech vinyl fence plant closure in Indiana

  Westech Building Products, which Westlake's 2018 subsidiary list names, was closing its Mount Vernon vinyl fence plant, and the Associated Press reported the last of the 81 affected employees were expected to lose their jobs by November 21.

What to do if you're laid off from Westlake

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Westlake's biggest hubs: Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi. 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 Westlake's hub states run: Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, 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.