More Oil & Gas Layoffs At Lafayette Company

Blue Sky Innovations in Lafayette has announced they will lay off all hourly employees by the end of the month and all salaried positions by the end of the year. The company has already issued a notice ending an existing contract and resulting in 55 layoffs.

Hundreds of Louisiana workers will be out of work as a result of GE Oil and Gas in Pineville closing its doors. Pineville Mayor Clarence Fields says the company is closing its Pineville facility to move its operation to their other location in Jacksonville, Florida. He says he is disappointed to see this company move to another state.

“Over the years obviously we’ve been a recipient of some job losses that’s been of that magnitude, but we seems to always overcome it. Hopefully we won’t see anything different here,” Fields said.

The plant closing will result in 269 of the company’s 289 employees encountering permanent layoffs. Fields says they have known this was coming since December and they are looking into repurposing the GE plant.

“It’s nothing that we have not been looking at over the past year as far as talking to other folks about the possibility of doing something with that facility,” Fields said.

Fields says the city will do as much as possible to help the employees who are laid off. He says they have also been trying to prepare for the impact this will have on the economy in central Louisiana.

“As far as the impact economically, hopefully we’ve done some things along the way that might overcome the immediate impact,” Fields said.