Bridgestone still struggling with plant closures across North America after cyberattack

Bridgestone-Firestone tire factories across North America and Latin America are still struggling to recover from a cyberattack after sending workers home for multiple days. The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

But USW 1155L, a union representing workers at the factory, took to Facebook to notify employees that the company was still dealing with the cyberattack and did not need people to come in. 

“Warren hourly teammates who are scheduled to work day shift, March 1st, will not be required to report to work (no hit, no pay, or you have the option to take vacation), the union wrote on Monday. 

The outages were first announced on Sunday, when the union explained on Facebook that Bridgestone Americas was “investigating a potential information security incident.” 

The notice appeared to come directly from the company as opposed to the union itself. 

“Since learning of the potential incident in the early morning hours of February 27, we have launched a comprehensive investigation to quickly gather facts while working to ensure the security of our IT systems. Out of an abundance of caution, we disconnected many of our manufacturing and retreading facilities in Latin America and North America from our network to contain and prevent any potential impact, including those at Warren TBR Plant. First shift operations were shut down, so those employees were sent home,” the company explained.

“Until we learn more from this investigation, we cannot determine with certainty the scope or nature of any potential incident, but we will continue to work diligently to address any potential issues that may affect our operations, our data, our teammates, and our customers.”

On Tuesday evening, the company reiterated that hourly workers scheduled for Wednesday will not be required to report to work.

Bridgestone Americas operate dozens facilities across North America, Central America and the Caribbean, with a workforce over 50,000.

Local news outlets from across the US reported on outages affecting factories in Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and in Canada.