Kinda sad actually. I went to another auction today in Gardner, this one I knew had been coming up for a while and was one not to miss. It was one of if not THE last large furniture manufacturer in the northeast. 100,000 square feet of building, millions and millions of dollars in equipment. 20 spray booths easy. At least 4 LARGE turret cnc routers with 8 stations. This was a VERY large operation. Walking through there it would just absolutely BOGGLE your mind as to the size of the operation.
So now you got the background and here's the rant. I got to talking with a younger guy there maybe in his mid 30's and he mentioned he used to work there for 9 years. Guy tells me he was a spray finisher and he got paid $20 and hour piecework. Do 55 pieces in an hour...get paid full pay. Do 30 pieces and hour and they reduced the pay to like $13 an hour. It was piecework incentive. Really tough way to make a living for a family but he learned to work quickly and efficiently and made a decent days pay.
These guys decided to fold and started laying people off and eventually it was a skeleton crew. I asked him why he thought they went out. His comment was that they had outsourced to China some of their stuff and he thought that was what started drawing the company down. Then he said that someone who I won't name bought alot of the assets including the name etc. Hey you buy a name you buy their image too. This company is in NY and he said that they were taking everything to get this...VIETNAM to build all the furniture now.
Folks this is what's wrong with America. Where 2-300 people could have been employed still, these guys paid for the name to get the image and will have all the stuff made overseas. UGH I find this disgusting and above all very sad.
I asked him how the quality was...knowing that alot of people have said to me that have done this that it was very high. These are chairs, tables, desks, etc. pretty generic stuff. He said it was garbage.
For the almighty dollar these guys sold everyone out and now your stuck buying CRAP that they import instead of a local company in business for over 80 years.
Make a conscious decision to support your local merchants and don't go to Walmart or Target etc that bring this stuff in from overseas. Goes for tackle or anything else you buy too.
Edit...oh by the way. They're going to knock the entire building down and put a mini strip mall in place of it too.
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