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Friday, October 24, 2008 10:41 AM Elm City plant closes its doors By Antonio Velarde | Times Staff Writer ELM CITY - IWCO Direct, a Minnesota company that provides direct mail production and advertising, closed its Elm City plant Thursday, laying off all 380 employees. The company announced the closing Thursday morning and said it will transfer equipment and production operations from Elm City to three other IWCO Direct facilities in Minnesota. Employees with the Elm City facility, which is on U.S. 301, will be given 60 days severance pay and benefits, said Debora Haskel, company vice president of marketing. Haskel added that laid off employees will also be given outplacement support, and that some could receive employment opportunities in the company's Minnesota offices, which will be expanding with 250 new positions. Haskel, who said the closing was "the best decision we could make at the time," did not have specifics on how many employees would be transferred. Haskel said the company decided to close the plant because companies that use IWCO Direct for direct-mailing services this year have not been mailing information to potential customers as much as before, due to the current state of the economy. She said that industry-wide, mail volume this year had been down, with some marketers cutting their mailing quantities by as much as 40 percent. The U.S. Postal Service is down about 9 billion pieces of mail compared to last year. Also, credit card companies are less reluctant to take on new customers, with fewer mailings going out, she said. "So there simply isn't the volume to keep the plant in business right now," she said. The decision of the company, which is consolidating all its operations in Minnesota, cames as a surprise to Elm City and Wilson County. Wilson County commissioners earlier this year had given IWCO Direct a $275,000 economic development incentive, plus $90,000 over three years as the company made an investment toward adding more jobs at the plant. The company had said late last year that it planned to add 220 jobs to the Elm City plant. IWCO Direct completed its purchase of the Elm City facility from Cox Target Media in December 2007, after Cox consolidated its direct-mail operations in Florida. The building had formerly been constructed and operated by Donnelley Marketing. Elm City Mayor Grady Smith, after having learned about the plant closing Thursday evening from The Wilson Times, said the plant was one of the town's largest employers. He said, though, that he was not surprised at the plant closing, as economic troubles have meant hard times for companies across the country. "Nothing is moving; nobody is doing a lot of buying right now," he said. Kris Leroy, 30, who moved with his family from Virginia to Wilson more than a year ago to take a supervisor's position at the plant, said that after 12 years in envelope and paper, he took the Elm City job thinking IWCO Direct would stay alive in a dead tree industry being rendered obsolete in the Internet age. But Leroy said the plant, which had a capacity of running up to 80 million packages a month, had never seen anything more than 45 million to 50 million a month and that this month had seen maybe 25 million. "We barely had enough to sustain the plant," he said. The plant had gotten rid of temporary workers, consolidated operations and, near the end, had even been shutting down on Saturdays for the past few months, he said. Leroy, who was offered a position in Minnesota with the company, said he felt the company did what it had to do. He said that after company meetings had been held 10 days ago at the plant, word had been spreading about the possibility of more drastic changes. The announcement that the plant would be closing was made at 7:30 a.m. Thursday by company executives who came to the plant for the announcement. While some employees were thankful for a layoff, Leroy said others were upset. He said a man just years from retirement tore up at the announcement, while a group behind him applauded his action. "It was really sad, man," he said. "There were a lot of people crying, and a lot of emotions." avelarde@wilsontimes.com | 265-7868 |
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Que Sera said...
Do we get those local (Town or City or both) incentives back? Or did they just skip town, with hundreds of thousands of dollars? Along with the broken promises of new jobs and expansion? I realize asking these companies for more than a day's warning before they ruin people lives might be a stretch, but... It seems to me the WEDC-- in addition to bending over backwards to lure (bribe) these companies to relocate, locate, or stay in Wilson-- should also (if they don't already) add some written and enforceable safeguards into their terms, thus saving the taxpayer, millions of hard earned dollars.
Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 10:44 AM
Do we get those local (Town or City or both) incentives back? Or did they just skip town, with hundreds of thousands of dollars? Along with the broken promises of new jobs and expansion? I realize asking these companies for more than a day's warning before they ruin people lives might be a stretch, but... It seems to me the WEDC-- in addition to bending over backwards to lure (bribe) these companies to relocate, locate, or stay in Wilson-- should also (if they don't already) add some written and enforceable safeguards into their terms, thus saving the taxpayer, millions of hard earned dollars.
Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 10:44 AM
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