Another shock to the Northern Utah economy was announced today, according to this morning's Standard-Examiner story. La-Z-Boy, which has operated a factory in Box Elder County for the last thirty years, has suddenly decided to call it quits. The company is reportedly moving many of its Box Elder County jobs to Mexico -- where else? We incorporate Std-Ex reporter Jeff DeMoss's key paragraphs below:
TREMONTON — Officials here were shocked to learn late Wednesday that the La-Z-Boy plant that has been in town for 30 years will close this summer, leaving 630 people out of work.“My heart is broken to see them leave,” says Mayor Weeks. We're going to bet he's not lyin' about that.
“All I know is I came into the office at about a quarter to four, and I was handed a letter that said they were leaving the community,” Tremonton Mayor Max Weese said. “It just totally caught me off guard.”
La-Z-Boy Inc. said Wednesday it is closing the Utah plant as part of a companywide push to improve efficiency.
The Monroe, Mich.-based manufacturer of the famous reclining chairs is also moving sewing and cutting operations from its five other domestic facilities to a single plant in Mexico, which will eliminate another 1,050 jobs in the United States.
630 jobs lost in Tremonton; 1,050 jobs lost in the US. Tell the people of Box Elder County that the economy isn't in recession.
Sorry we can't provide a story link. The Std-Ex pay website is on the blink, for the second time today. We're still scratching our heads wondering why the Standard-Examiner continues to hide most of its news stories behind a regularly dysfunctional pay firewall. Maybe it has something to do with the failing economy.
7 comments:
went to dinner last night out at the kemp building. the building that ogden built. realized that most of the building is empty. no helicopter flight school anymore and next door the new to be adams aircraft building is empty as well.
wonder how long before kemp comes to the city for relief or for some kind of additional subsidy.
Rudi:
Here's a link to the SL Trib's story on Lazy-Boy's sending Utah jobs to Mexico.
As for the SE's handling of its website, two points; (a) I suspect they are somewhat reluctant to give their product away free. It's hard to make money when you do that, most times. (b) The SE provides behind the pay wall, it's FULL edition, every day. Every line, every ad, every letter, every small space filler, every major story, every minor one. I like that. The SL Trib puts a selection of its content up, and on an ad driven page, but not a photo copy of the entire paper as the SE does.
My guess is the SE has numbers showing that if it put the whole content up free, it would not make nearly as much from click-through web ads as it would lose from canceled subscriptions. Again, why pay subscription rates if the entire content is available free on line? Can't really argue with their thinking on that.
Newspapers are going under, nationwide, at an alarming rate. The SE apparently has found, for the nonce at least, a formula that turns a profit. I imagine the limited free access/full access with subscription policy is part of that mix. If it keeps them in the black and publishing,well.... These are parlous times. The "First MBA President" as G. Bush used to like to call himself before his administration ran the economy and the dollar into the ground, has created tough times for lots of businesses. And people, employed and [in increasing numbers] unemployed. In these times, if the SE has a formula that works, it would be unreasonable to expect the paper to pitch it over just to accommodate non-subscribers with completely free web access to its entire content, seems to me.
Did anyone catch the article in today's paper about the Midtown Village developers going to Clearfield city and asking for changes on that project now? Now all three projects they were involved in are now in trouble. How could you miss this one?
With everyone paying more for gas to get to work, and groceries going up everyday the economy is just supporting big oil. Almost everyone I know has stopped looking for furniture, tv's, big items and waiting for the next election and see if we will recover. Moving their company to Mexico may help out the corporation, but some companies that re-located there left after a few years of paying officials and police bribes to stay there.
With oil driving all our prices up I heard to fill up gas and stock up on groceries before the 25th because the truckers are set for a nationwide strike.
I know that Autoliv moved some of their operations to Mexico, and they are having a tough time with the logistics. The tariffs to move product in and out of Mexico is exorbitant, and the freight is a lot more than they had planned, they are considering moving operations back to the states.
I have not heard much talk about the major salary cut that lazy boy gave it's employees last year. When you cut your employee's wages by more than half you are going to have a high turn over. They have nothing else to blame but themselves. Not impressed, with a company that I once was.
Today we learn the economy cut 80,000 jobs last month, and January and February's losses were increased for a total of 232,000 jobs lost in the past three months. Unemployment rose to 5.1% in March. With weekly unemployment claims still rising, this should continue to get worse for some time.
Yet, the market is up. It looks like the brokers are making good use of the taxpayer money the Fed gave them last week. One wonders how long it will last.
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