Whirlpool to lay off hundreds of workers at Amana plant

Whirlpool announced 650 jobs will be cut at its Amana plant due to changing market conditions, while locals say the layoffs are unlikely to affect Amana residents, as most of the plant’s workers live elsewhere.

Emma Jane, News Reporter

April 22, 2025

John Charlson

The Recruiting Center entrance at the Whirlpool Corporation’s manufacturing facility in Amana is seen on Tuesday, April 15, 2025. With a change in market conditions, 650 jobs will be cut at the Amana plant.

Whirlpool Corporation announced plans to lay off approximately 650 employees within specific production teams at its Amana plant on April 1.

“We are committed to supporting affected employees through this transition by providing access to onsite HR support and a dedicated employee support line, an employee assistance program, and guidance on unemployment benefits through Iowa Workforce Development,” a statement from Whirlpool Corporation reads.

In an email to The Daily Iowan, Chad Parks, the director of external communications, specified that the layoffs, which will take effect June 1, are unrelated to the tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on April 2.

“It’s about adjusting our production at our Amana, Iowa, operations to be in line with current market conditions driven by consumer demand, particularly as it relates to certain appliances (refrigeration) made in Amana,” Parks wrote.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Solution Center, Whirlpool’s Amana facility spans 43 acres and employed nearly 3,000 people as of December 2020. Although 650 jobs represent a sizable portion of the plant’s workforce, Amana residents say the layoffs are unlikely to impact the community significantly.

Dennis Roemig, a guide at the Amana Heritage Society Museum and lifelong Amana resident, said most Amana residents work in neighboring towns.

“People live here, but they work elsewhere,” Roemig said. “This is where their house is, they come to sleep and eat. But their lives are outside of the Amanas.”

The Amana Colonies were founded in 1714 by German settlers seeking religious freedom and communal living. By 1932, growing dissatisfaction with the strict rules of communal life and a series of economic hardships led to the dissolution of the communal system. Around the same time, local resident George C. Foerstner founded the Electrical Equipment Company, which built its first beverage cooler in 1934 at the Middle Amana Woolen Mill.

The company was sold to the Amana Society in 1936, then repurchased and renamed Amana Refrigeration, Inc. in 1950. The mill site later became a major production center for refrigerators, freezers, and air conditioners — and eventually the Amana Whirlpool plant.

Margo Jarosz, who grew up in Amana, is the president of the Amana Heritage Society, and now works seasonally at the Gallery on Main, explained the former Middle Amana Woolen Mill has changed hands several times since Foerstner’s era.

“In 1965, when I was still living here, Raytheon purchased them,” Jarosz said. “They’ve had various corporate parents since then.”

Jarosz said during her childhood in the baby boom era following World War II, many local Amana residents were employed at the plant; however, this changed with the plant’s expansion.

“Many of my friends’ dads and moms, for that matter, worked there. At that point in time, there’s probably more Amana people than outside people,” Jarosz said. “But it kept growing and growing.”

In 2006, Whirlpool Corporation acquired Maytag Corporation, thereby gaining ownership of the Amana brand and its associated manufacturing facility in Amana. In 2020, Whirlpool sold its Amana plant for $92.7 million to WHRAMIA001 LLC, a foreign limited liability corporation using a fictitious name, as part of a sale-leaseback agreement intended to optimize its real estate portfolio, Corridor Business Journal reported.

As the plant expanded, Jarosz explained, it had to draw workers from surrounding communities, since the local population, just under 1,000 across Amana, Middle Amana, and East Amana, according to the 2020 U.S. Census, was not large enough to meet its labor demands.

Tonya Bern, who has lived in Amana for 34 years, said the plant feels out of place in the Amana communities, and the traffic and unfamiliar workers at the plant can be a concern for local families.

“We’re little towns,” Bern said. “You have grandkids, you have your kids growing up. You’ve got to keep them away because you just don’t know a lot of people that work there coming out of town. You’ve got to be careful.”