Monona plant closing, latest in round of Iowa manufacturing job losses

The planned closing of a wiring harness plant in Clayton County in the spring of 2017 is the latest in a series of Iowa manufacturing job losses.

Commercial Vehicle Group on Wednesday said it will close its plant in Monona, idling more than 100 people. The New Albany, Ohio, company shut down a plant in Edgewood in late May, eliminating about 80 jobs.

The Clayton County plant, formerly known as Monona Wire, employs 146. CVG said some employees will stay on to support purchasing, sales and administrative activities for the company's North American wire harness business.

CVG's announcement followed by a day the abrupt shut down of the Terex Crane plant in Waverly, eliminating employment for 175 in the Bremer County community. Terex is consolidating production of rough terrain cranes, truck cranes and boom trucks at an expanded plant in Oklahoma City.

The Terex closing ended 75 years of crane manufacturing in the community of just over 10,000 people.

Washington, Iowa, is facing a similar scenario as Modine Manufacturing phases out production, closing a plant by the end of this year that had 245 full-time employees when the company announced its decision in April 2015.

Racine, Wis.-based Modine is transferring production of liquid charge air coolers, plate oil coolers and fuel coolers for the automotive, commercial vehicle and off-highway markets to plants in Missouri and Mexico. The company has attributed the plant closing to wage and benefit costs that are too high for the company to compete in the global marketplace.

The loss of manufacturing jobs from plant closings in Iowa has been accompanied by layoffs at agricultural equipment suppliers such as John Deere and Kinze Manufacturing as sales have slowed in response to sharply lower corn and soybean prices.

Deere, which has about 2,000 employees in Iowa and Illinois on layoff, has projected a 10 percent drop in sales for fiscal year 2016. Williamsburg-based Kinze has laid off more than 330 over the last two years.

Over the past year, a nine-state region that includes Iowa has lost approximately 2 percent, or roughly 27,000 manufacturing jobs, according to Creighton University's Economic Forecasting Group.