Look Back ... to more layoffs at the Gadsden Goodyear plant, 1999

Feb. 4—Feb. 4, 1949, in The Star: Robert K. Bell, the department commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the Department of Alabama, will preside over the Mid-Winter Conference of the VFW to be held in Anniston tomorrow and Sunday. The program begins Saturday afternoon at the George N. Meredith Post 924. Elvin C. McCary of Anniston, junior vice commander, will serve as toastmaster for the banquet at the Jefferson Davis Hotel that evening.

Feb. 4, 1999, in The Star: Nearly 4,000 workers toiled at the Gadsden Goodyear plant at its peak capacity in the 1980s. By the end of this year, however, the plant, opened in 1929, will have stopped producing tires, leaving only a skeleton workforce of near-retirees to mix rubber for other plants until they reach retirement age. Approximately 980 were laid off yesterday, turned away from the Gadsden Goodyear "family" when management officials said they wouldn't be needed anymore. Combined with nearly 800 workers laid off in 1998, they say their company has let them down. The layoffs will hit the city of Gadsden itself, for it relies on hundreds of thousands of dollars in occupational tax revenue to operate — revenue which will be drastically reduced by the end of the year.