Woodgrain Millwork to lay off remaining workforce after roof collapsed in November.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Woodgrain Millwork will lay off its remaining workforce and close its Prineville factory after its roof collapsed in November.
More than 200 employees had already lost their jobs after the facility lost its roof.
“Unfortunately, due to the recent loss of significant sales volume, the operation is no longer financially viable,” Judy Toholsky, a Woodgrain human resources manager, wrote in a Friday letter to Oregon’s Dislocated Workers Unit. She wrote that layoffs will begin December 28; the permanent closure takes effect January 31.
Woodgrain said it will offer laid-off workers at other sites in the U.S. Toholsky wrote the exterior door frame work that had been done in Prineville will move to a facility in Fruitland, Idaho.
Once a thriving mill and cattle town, Prineville has suffered decades of hardship paralleling the decline of the Northwest’s timber industry. In 2008, at the outset of the Great Recession, Les Schwab Tire Centers moved its corporate headquarters from Prineville to Bend.
(SOURCE: OregonLive.com)
Mayor Betty Roppe bemoaned the company’s decision.
Mayor Betty Roppe said, “We‘ve had them quite a while and would have loved to have seen them stay, but they’ve made the business decision that it’s not going to be.”
Roppe said Easton told her the plant would be closed by the end of January.
(SOURCE: Bend Bulletin)
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