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December 17, 2009
The manufacturing plant confirms it's laying off a large number of its production employees.
The president of Paul Mueller says the layoffs are in conjunction with a scheduled plant holiday shutdown.
KOLR/KSFX spoke with an employee as he left work for the day. He says the layoffs affect between 150 and 200 people.
And he was under the impression that even after the two-week holiday break, most of those people will not be coming back to work.
John Gibson worked at Paul Mueller for almost ten years. He says he and his coworkers knew a mass layoff was coming.
It was just a matter of when, not if.
Gibson says he heard that all supervisors were called this morning and told to tell employees they are effectively laid off.
He says the decision is partly because of the economy.
Paul Mueller reported a loss of $618,000 in its third quarter report.
Gibson also says a breakdown in talks with an employee union affected the decision to lay people off.
Gibson is a 40-year-old fabricator welder and says a week before Christmas, he has to hit the brakes on his life and start over.
"This is the first time I've even had to think about looking for another job in ten years so I'm in that place in between, 'Yeah, we'll hire you.' and 'I'm sorry, but you're just too old.'"
Gibson says there are some employees still working, including machinists, maintenance workers and office staff.
As for Paul Mueller's side, the company has declined to comment beyond confirming the layoffs occurred.
This isn't the first time we've heard about layoffs at Paul Mueller.
Gibson says the company has been steadily laying people off all year, so that's why he wasn't surprised today.
He says 1,200 people used to work there, and now the plant is down to fewer than 200.
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