LONGVIEW - Hundreds of employees have been laid off at the Trinity Industries Longview Branch.

Trinity is a national tank car company and LEDCO officials say the demand for tank cars has gone down in Longview so jobs had to be cut.

Trinity has four plants in Longview that employed about 1200 people.

The company released this statement today about the layoffs.

"On Thursday January 8, Trinity tank car manufacturing plants in Longview, Texas notified its employees of a reduction in force.

The reduction affects 297 hourly and administrative members of the workforce.

The affected employees were notified during meetings held today.

The reduction is due to a downturn in orders in that sector of the business."

LEDCO Director, John Stroud says, "Trinity doubled employees in 2005 from 600 to 1200 so this is bad news...the issue I think is what do we see happening in coming months and we have to keep our eye on what's happening at a national level and national economy because that's starting to impact us substantially here."

Stroud says everyone who was laid off will continue working for the next two weeks and will qualify for unemployment.