Piper lays off 12 employees, will keep paying them through holidays
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/dec/15/piper-lays-off-12-employees/
VERO BEACH — Piper Aircraft Inc. officials Wednesday announced they were laying off 12 employees.
Executive Vice President Randy Groom said the layoffs were the result of the company trying to match employment numbers with anticipated production demand and are in line with its philosophy to try to reduce overhead for the long-term sustainability of the general aviation aircraft manufacturer.
"It was a difficult decision," said Groom, but one he thought was right for the remaining employees and for the long-term success of the company.
Groom said while it initially was thought there might be an increase in general aviation aircraft sales next year, that is no longer the case. Instead, he said, some industry observers believe next year might actually be the low point for the industry.
Groom said Piper expects sales to generally be in line with this year's numbers.
"We want to be conservative going into next year. We don't want to build airplanes and hope people come (and purchase them)," he said.
"There really is a change in leadership strategy here," said Groom. While he said the company always will have some additional planes on hand, it doesn't want to have large numbers of unsold airplanes sitting around.
The layoffs of support personnel in the manufacturing area follows September's layoffs of 60 employees after a downward revision in the company's sales forecasts and the October departure of three members of the company's seven-member executive team.
As far as the timing of the layoffs shortly before the Christmas holidays, Groom said "there is no good time to do this sort of thing," and officials did make the decision to continue to pay the employees until Jan. 4.
"We thought that was the right thing to do," he said.
The most recent layoffs reduces total employment at the Vero Beach manufacturer to 818 employees, which is still an increase from the 638 employees the company had at the beginning of the year.
"So while we've had a few ups and downs, the net is obviously an increase in employees," said Groom.
He said going forward officials really "want to manage the company so we don't have a lot of employment ups and downs. We thought that is better for the company and better for employees."
While Groom could not guarantee there would not be additional layoffs, he said the company's goal is to have a more stable employment environment next year.
About 150 of the company's current employees are assigned to the PiperJet Altaire program and the company plans to travel throughout the country next year with a mock-up of that aircraft, which is scheduled for delivery to customers in 2014.
Groom said an announcement is imminent on a new chief executive officer for the company and a new vice president of engineering is expected to be announced in January. Geoffrey Berger, managing director of Piper's parent company, Imprimis, has been serving as interim chief executive officer since former chief executive officer Kevin Gould left the company in July. The former vice president of engineering, Dennis Olcott, left the company in September.
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Jon
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