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Hanesbrands cuts 155 local jobs
Journal photo by David Rolfe
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Published: November 18, 2008
Updated: 11/18/2008 05:07 pm
Winston-Salem has again taken the brunt of a major job cut from a major hometown employer.
Hanesbrands Inc. announced today that it is cutting 155 jobs in Winston-Salem as part of eliminating 210 corporate and management jobs companywide.
It also announced it is closing a yarn plant in China Grove, eliminating 185 jobs by year's end.
The company said that about half of the cutbacks are being made in its supply-chain management organization and half in its corporate functions of customer management, finance, human resources, information technology and marketing.
"Given the significant economic uncertainty, we must manage our business conservatively, and we must tightly control costs," Richard Noll, the chief executive of Hanesbrands, said in a statement.
"With these actions, we are accelerating our on-going functional consolidation and conducting additional streamlining. These are difficult but necessary actions that we must take to compete in today's market environment and emerge as a stronger company."
Besides the 170 local corporate and management jobs, the company said that another 35 are being eliminated at "various other U.S. locations" and 20 at international locations."
Since becoming an independent company in September 2006, Hanesbrands has cut 46 percent of its North Carolina work force, or 3,920 jobs. That includes eliminating at least 1,645 jobs in Forsyth County, or 35 percent of its local work force before the spinoff.
Once this round of job cuts is completed, the company will have 4,585 employees in North Carolina, including 3,255 in Forsyth.
And, for a company that once kept thousands locally employed in plants that dotted Northwest North Carolina, Hanesbrands has just one major Triad manufacturing site left — a sock plant in Mount Airy that has 400 employees.
Since spinning off from Sara Lee Corp., Hanesbrands has closed, or is closing, at least 30 plants worldwide. That includes at least 11 in North Carolina.
The company said that the closing of the China Grove plant is the "result of declining needs for higher-end ring-spun yarn used in certain underwear, sock and T-shirt products."
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