By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
Maxon Furniture laid off 48 of its Salisbury-plant employees last Thursday, the cutback reportedly owing to an ongoing economic downturn.
“It was essentially due to business conditions,” said Julie Barr, director of member and community relations for Maxon’s Salisbury plant.
She said she wasn’t sure of the number of employees remaining in Salisbury, and referred inquiries to officials with Maxon’s headquarters in Renton, Wash. Calls there were not returned Monday.
A spokeswoman for Salisbury’s branch of the N.C. Employment Security Commission said they hadn’t been notified of Maxon’s cutbacks, and said the local commission didn’t have data on the number of people the company employs.
Barr said cutbacks in Salisbury were “across the board,” not affecting one portion of the business more than another.
“We made some adjustments,” Barr said. “We made some reductions.”
The Salisbury plant started here in 1989 as BPI. According to a 2006 article in the Post, the company operates out of a 120,000-square-foot building on Grace Church Road.
Maxon makes work stations, including the panels, work surfaces and storage compartments seen in many office environments. Approximately 95 percent of its market is in the United States.
According to information released last week by the Employment Security Commission, Rowan County’s jobless rate jumped to 12 percent in February. It’s the largest number seen since the Pillowtex plants in Rowan and Cabarrus counties closed in July 2003.
Rowan county’s unemployment number increased from 11.4 percent in January and is more than double the 5.5 percent unemployment rate from February 2008. The ESC reported that 8,782 people qualified for unemployment benefits in Rowan in February.
As bad as the local economic situation is, things are expected to get worse before improving. The most recent unemployment figures do not include the 1,290 Freightliner employees who were laid off effective March 13 from the Cleveland truck plant.
Another round of Freightliner layoffs are expected to take place in May. Unemployment rates increased in all but one of North Carolina’s 100 counties in February.
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Post staff writer Mark Wineka contributed to this story.