Howells & Hood, the restaurant on the Tribune Tower's ground floor, is planning to close Sept. 30, 2018, and will lay off 133 employees. Owner Bottleneck Management intends to transfer "many if not all" employees to its other restaurants. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

A manufacturer of storage safes is closing its two Chicago-area factories and moving operations to Mexico, in part because of the Trump administration’s tariffs on metal from China.

Stack-On Products plans to lay off 128 people at its facility in north suburban Wauconda and 25 people at its McHenry plant when it closes both facilities Oct. 12, said Al Fletcher, human resources director for Alpha Guardian, the Las Vegas-based parent company.

“The operation is really not profitable,” Fletcher said. He said the decision to relocate operations to Juarez, Mexico, was made about two months ago when President Donald Trump announced tariffs on numerous goods and materials from China as well as other countries, to reduce what the president has called an unfair trade deficit.

“Mr. Trump is part of this,” Fletcher said. So far, the United States has imposed tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese technology goods and $3 billion of Chinese steel and aluminum, and has proposed another $16 billion.

Stack-On, which has operated in the Chicago area for 40 years, makes storage products ranging from tool boxes to gun vaults that are sold at Menards, Walmart and other mass retailers.

The company already has a plant in China and another in Mexico, and its only U.S. factories were the two in the Chicago area, Fletcher said. The layoffs affect manufacturing jobs, warehouse jobs and some office staff, and those employees will be given the option to relocate to El Paso, Texas, just over the border from the Juarez plant, he said. Engineering and sales and marketing employees will be retained and relocated within the Chicago area.

The 153 layoffs at Stack-On are among 885 coming job cuts that Illinois employers reported last month to the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. The Illinois Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers with at least 75 workers to notify the state 60 days in advance of a plant closing or mass layoff that affects at least a third of the workforce.

Another manufacturer reporting layoffs is MW Industries, which will cut 49 employees by the end of the year when it closes a plant that makes automotive springs in Chicago’s Sauganash neighborhood on the Northwest Side.

The Rosemont-based company, which makes precision metal components for clients such Caterpillar and John Deere, is relocating the springs manufacturing operation to Logansport, Ind., where it already has a large facility, said Darlene Kober, senior vice president of marketing and sales.

“It is part of our normal review of our plant operations,” Kober said. Affected employees have been offered the opportunity to consider relocating to Indiana or MW’s other four Illinois facilities in Elk Grove Village, Bensenville, Bloomingdale and Schiller Park, she said.

The Sauganash property is being sold to Peoples Gas, which is building a new administrative campus near the factory as it moves from its longtime headquarters at the Six Corners Shopping District in Irving Park, Kober said. Peoples Gas, which broke ground on its new building at Peterson and Pulaski streets late last month, has said it will bring 430 jobs to the neighborhood, though most will be workers relocating from the current location.

Peoples Gas spokeswoman Vanessa Hall said in an email: “We have been in discussion with other property owners within the area, but are unable to comment on any potential or pending transactions.”

Laurie Dodson, a customer service manager at the MW factory who has worked there for 21 years, is frustrated that celebrations of Peoples Gas’ new facility have not taken into account the lost factory jobs.

“It’s not easy being 55 years old and putting together a resume and going through the process,” Dodson said. “I invested 21 years, I intended to retire with this company.”

Also reporting layoffs last month was Rush University Medical Center, which is in the process of outsourcing management of its engineering and facilities services to real estate firm JLL, a transition that affects 110 jobs. All of the affected employees have been offered positions at JLL, which takes over Sept. 4, said Rush spokesman Charles Jolie.

Another 133 layoffs are coming to the restaurant Howells and Hood at the base of the Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue, which is planning to close Sept. 30 as the building undergoes a redevelopment.

There are no plans to reopen Howells and Hood, which is named after the architects of the iconic neo-gothic building and occupies a massive 17,300 square feet of ground-floor space and a 5,000-square-foot patio on the tower's plaza. But the company that owns the restaurant, Bottleneck Management, owns 15 other restaurants, most in Chicago and the suburbs, and “it is our intent to transfer as many if not all of our employees at all of our Chicago restaurants,” said co-owner Chris Bisaillon. Bottleneck’s other Chicago restaurants include Sweetwater downtown, Boundary in Wicker Park and Old Town Pour House in Old Town.

“We already have landing spots for all of our managers and chefs,” Bisaillon said. “Anybody that has some mobility, there are plenty of opportunities.”

Other employers that reported layoffs in July were: