Ingersoll-Rand cuts jobs

It will lay off 110 employees as it plans to outsource sheet-metal business

By: By Michael Hewlett | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: November 20, 2008

MOCKSVILLE

The job cuts keep coming.

Ingersoll-Rand Co., one of the largest employers in Davie County, said yesterday that it is laying off 110 employees at its Mocksville plant. The news came a day after Hanesbrands Inc. said it was cutting 155 jobs in Winston-Salem.

The Ingersoll-Rand plant has 430 employees. After the layoffs are completed, the plant will have 320 employees. The company expects to finish the layoffs in the first quarter of 2009.

The layoffs come because Ingersoll-Rand is outsourcing its sheet-metal business, said Susan Jaramillo, the director of communications for the industrial-technology sector for Ingersoll Rand.

The company is focusing more on machining and assembly, she said.

"We have never done sheet metal in our newer facilities," Jaramillo said. "We kept sheet metal in Mocksville because it's always been there."

Ingersoll-Rand makes air compressors, tools, fluid handling and other products and employs 64,000 people around the world. The sheet metal was used to make the air compressors.

The plant has operated in Mocksville since 1965. It has grown from 75 employees in a single building to 600 employees in five buildings covering more than 400,000 square feet. The plant went down to 430 employees when Ingersoll-Rand sold a separate division that operated out of the plant about a year ago, Jaramillo said.

In October, it announced that it was consolidating its production operations in the town of Davidson and moving about 130 jobs to the Mocksville plant.

The declining volumes of sheet metal as well as the global economic downturn had made investing in the sheet-metal division more costly, according to a company statement sent to county officials.

Terry Bralley, the president of the Davie County Economic Development Council and a former manager of Davie County, said he was disappointed to hear the news but not surprised.

"In a worldwide market, all companies are looking at ... how they compete with the competition," Bralley said. "This is something that's going on constantly."

Ingersoll-Rand announced last month that its third-quarter net earnings fell nearly 15 percent, from $266.6 million a year ago to $227.7 million, according to MarketWatch.com. Revenues increased from $2.24 billion to $4.31 billion, according to MarketWatch.com.

Jaramillo said that Ingersoll-Rand has not decided where it will outsource its sheet-metal business. Mocksville was one of the last plants that Ingersoll-Rand operated that produced a significant volume of sheet metal, she said.

Jaramillo said that the company is offering outplacement counseling at the plant, and an employee-assistance program has been set up for affected employees and their families as well as for other employees.

Bralley said he hopes that the company might be able to move other operations into the space where the sheet-metal division will soon vacate, resulting in additional jobs for the area.

"What we'd love to be able to do is find new opportunities for those folks to go back out into the work force," he said.

■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.