VERO BEACH, FL -- Piper Aircraft Inc. laid off 300 employees Tuesday.
In a prepared statement, Piper confirmed the layoffs citing the economic downturn.
“The business is planning to close for one week in April and July to avoid building up unnecessary inventory and to provide time to assess rapidly changing market conditions,” said Piper spokesman Mark Miller is an e-mail. “These shutdowns will be without pay and will affect all employees in the company, from executive management to hourly manufacturing employees.”
Miller said, “if market conditions continue to deteriorate, it may be necessary for the company to take additional actions.”
No information about the company’s $32 million incentive package was made in the statement.
The company already received its first payment of $4 million from Indian River County and almost $6.7 million from the state.
Several employees leaving the plant on Tuesday said they were shocked and surprised that the company did not hold a company wide meeting to tell workers they were without jobs.
Instead, employees were brought in groups and told there were getting “permanently laid off.”
“No one told how these decisions were being made,” said 3 year Piper employee Robert Krauss on Tuesday. “I am worried about my house, my kids, my wife.”
Krauss has twin 8-year-old boys and a 14-year-old daughter. He is worried that his home might fall into foreclosure without his steady paycheck.
“I am still in shock,” Krauss said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
His wife Debra said she wanted answers from Piper.
“What are they doing with all that money from the county” she said after picking up her husband from the plant on Tuesday.
Leon Graybill, a sheet metal worker with Piper who was also laid off on Tuesday said he had hoped the incentive package Piper received from the state and county could save local jobs.
“They bought all this equipment and stuff and new trash cans, but what are they going to do with all of that without any of us workers,” Graybill said.
Hal Day, a 3 year Piper employee, also got laid off on Tuesday. He said has cancer and worries about how to pay for treatment without medical insurance. He said he has weekly doctors appointments that he might not be able to afford without his job at Piper.
“I don’t know what I am going to do now,” Day said Tuesday. “I started to get worried when they cut us down to four days a week.”
Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers first reported on the cutbacks in early November. Company layoffs followed in December but Piper CEO Jim Bass did not confirm the cutbacks until a Jan. 20 county commission meeting.
Michele Tyndall, a 4 year Piper employee that got her layoff papers Tuesday, worried about her two young daughters.
“They just paid us until the end of the day — that’s all,” Tyndall said.
