Wayne County to Lose 640 Jobs as Trinity Health and Niagara Bottling Cut Staff

More than 640 workers in western Wayne County, Michigan, will lose their jobs starting in October 2026, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filings with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.

Trinity Health accounts for the bulk of the cuts: 557 positions at its Livonia headquarters at 20555 Victor Parkway. Niagara Bottling LLC will eliminate another 86 jobs at its Plymouth plant at 8835 General Drive. Trinity Health filed its notice on Sept. 3; Niagara Bottling filed on Aug. 31.

The Trinity Health layoffs will roll out in phases between Oct. 25 and Nov. 29. Nearly all of the affected positions sit inside the health system's technology and information services division.

The cuts span roughly 120 job titles, but the distribution matters more than the breadth. The single largest group is 49 entry-level IT service desk support workers. Beyond that, the notice lists 17 second-level service desk workers, 17 server system administrators, 11 imaging analysts, 10 applications analysts and 10 IT monitoring operators.

For individual workers, the pattern is clear. This is not a broad corporate restructuring touching every function equally. It is a concentrated reduction in IT support and infrastructure operations at a headquarters location — precisely the tier of technology roles where help-desk and system administration work is most exposed to consolidation, automation and vendor outsourcing. Entry-level IT service desk staff, the largest single block, typically face the tightest replacement market when a large employer sheds them in one cluster, because dozens of workers with similar resumes hit the same regional job pool at once.

The second wave of cuts follows a different logic. At Niagara Bottling's Plymouth facility, the reductions target production workers: 21 production operators, 11 forklift operators, nine production operator leads and eight maintenance technicians, per the filing. Management and office staff are affected too. The list includes the plant director, the controller, four accounting analysts, a director of sales for national accounts and two directors of technical operations.

The scale of that management sweep points to a shutdown rather than a downsizing. Trade publication Eco Plastics in Packaging reports the plant will close Oct. 31. The facility formerly operated under Absopure.

The two cases bracket the current labor market's two most common layoff profiles. One is a corporate headquarters eliminating back-office technology roles in phases while the core business continues. The other is a physical production site shutting entirely, taking hourly operators and salaried leadership off the payroll on the same timeline.

Workers at both sites fall under WARN Act protections, which require 60 days' notice for mass layoffs and plant closures at employers with 100 or more staff. Both filings meet that threshold ahead of the October start dates.

For the 640 affected workers, the practical question is timing. Trinity Health's phased schedule runs through Nov. 29, giving later-wave employees additional weeks of income and job-search runway. Niagara Bottling's Plymouth workers face a firmer deadline of Oct. 31, assuming the reported closure date holds.