Wyoming trona workers demonstrate amid pending layoffs: ‘Lives are at risk here’

Trona workers and their spouses, children and more than 100 community members protested at the break of dawn Monday to show support for 350 WE Soda employees facing layoffs. “Lives are at risk here,” a union representative told WyoFile.

“What we would like to see is the mines stay open,” United Steelworkers Local 13214 President Marshal Cummings said. “And if we’re going to go to solution [mining] that we do it in slow waves through attrition so that it doesn’t completely demolish the community.” 

London-based WE Soda announced Wednesday it will convert its Westvaco underground mining operation to in-situ solution recovery, a less labor-intensive drill-and-pump method that, over the two-year transition, will result in a 41% workforce reduction. The shift is necessary, the company says, due to crushing global market forces driven by a flood of cheaper soda ash — the product derived from trona — from China.

The operational shift will also reduce soda ash output as WE Soda strategically pulls back from the global market to focus on customers in North America, it said. Soda ash is used in glass manufacturing, in cleaning products and in water treatment, among other things.

Layoffs are expected to begin in January and continue over a two-year period, the company said.

The company appears willing to cede Wyoming’s 14% of the global soda ash market, Cummings said, at the expense of a workforce that drives the economy in southwest Wyoming. The union is also pressuring Wyoming’s congressional delegation to take action, he added.

“I hope that they understand that lives are at risk here,” Cummings said. “And this is so much more than just a paycheck, because people’s futures are shattered — on a scale that Wyoming hasn’t seen very often.”

The demonstration was timed to show support to fellow workers on their way to work a shift at the Westvaco operations. Protesters lined a frontage road leading to the mine, lit a burn barrel for warmth and chanted “union strong.”

One child was pictured holding a sign that said, “I don’t know what a ‘layoff’ is, I just know my daddy is sad.”

“I think it was 21 degrees [Fahrenheit],” said Stan Blake, a former Wyoming legislator and Green River mayor-elect. “We wanted to show the people going in on the buses that, you know, we’re there, we’re willing to help out.”

“This is a gut punch,” Blake added. “I’d even call it a sucker punch because it came out of nowhere, as far as I know.”

Searching for answers

After a series of ownership changes, WE Soda completed its acquisition of Westvaco and other trona and soda ash properties in Sweetwater County in January 2025. It bought neighboring competitor Genesis Alkali the next month. In April of that year, it cut 48 jobs, including 32 salaried management positions and 16 contract positions, “to achieve efficiency, reduce redundancy and to strengthen the existing hourly workforce,” the company said.

All told, WE Soda has gone from about 1,100 employees in Wyoming to 850, Cummings estimated. Cutting the workforce further to 500, he said, “it’s disgusting.”

“This is so much deeper than just some union workers trying to be heard,” he added. “This is a community that’s hurting.”

Families in Green River, Blake said, are already worrying about how they’re going to make house payments and rent.

“It’s going to hurt,” he said. “If you don’t have a job, you’re not going to last very long.

“The mine [owners] have a great big heart,” Blake added sarcastically. “They’re not going to whack anybody until after Christmas.”

Beyond families reliant on the industry, Blake added, there could be a rise in empty homes, hammering local revenue from property taxes, not to mention the loss of middle-class households spending money at local businesses.

“I really don’t know what all the city can do to help,” Blake said. “But I know we can do food drives and help people.”

Blake, a retired railroad worker, said the Wyoming Legislature has often scrambled to find some authority to exert over railroads, to little avail. For example, authority to address shipping rates, which eats away at profit margins for the soda ash industry in Wyoming, lies with the federal government, he said. 

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It appears that trona and soda ash workers are totally reliant on Wyoming’s congressional delegation, he said.

“What are they going to do to help us out?” Blake asked. “Oil and gas always gets some big [tax] cuts. They always prop up the coal industry, every chance they get. It’s time to help prop up the soda industry and the trona miners.”

In light of the pending layoffs, Cummings said he was asked to lead his church’s congregation in prayer on Sunday. He broke down thinking about what his neighbors and fellow workers are suffering through.

“I’m terrified that they turn to booze, drugs, alcohol — whatever it is. That breaks my heart,” he said. “They don’t know how to respond because everything flips upside down.”

“I hope that we find a way to get this done,” Cummings added, “because I refuse to accept that this is the only way. This might be the cheapest way — the cheapest on a spreadsheet. Not the cheapest with blood [layoffs] on the ground.”