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Workers facing dilemma as Cashiers jobs move to Bryson City
By Derek Hodges
Employees at a 35-year-old plastics plant in Cashiers are facing a dilemma this holiday season.
ConMet, which is headquartererd in Portland, Ore., and also operates plants in Canton and Bryson City, is moving jobs from its southern Jackson County location.
“We’re moving most of those jobs to Bryson City and Canton, said Bryan Kenyon, a ConMet spokesman.
While most of the manufacturing jobs will be moved to the other locations, some of the machinery, too large to move, will remain at the Cashiers plant. Some administrative jobs will also remain, Kenyon said. The company makes parts used in large trucks, including Freightliner, Peterbilt, Kenworth, Mack and Volvo.
“About 80 jobs will move out of Cashiers, while 25 will remain,” Kenyon said.
The Cashiers facility has between 120 and 130 employees, Kenyon said. Only about 105 positions will be retained, meaning 15-25 jobs will be cut.
The company has offered its Cashiers employees the option to either take a job in Bryson City or Canton, or be laid off. Kenyon said he expects more than the necessary 15-25 positions will be left empty by employees who decide not to move.
“Some of our employees could see that as a reasonable commute to Bryson City or Canton. The predominant number right now are choosing not to transfer, though. Anyone who’s not willing to transfer will be laid off,” Kenyon said.
Those who choose not to move have been given a temporary reprieve; layoffs won’t start until January, Kenyon said.
The layoffs will affect employees with an average wage of about $12, Kenyon said. Those workers also have what Kenyon described as a “very good” benefits package that includes stock options and health care.
“A number of our local Cashiers-area residents depend on those positions. It’s an unfortunate situation,” said Jackson County Commissioner Eddie Madden, who represents the Cashiers area. “Those are good-paying jobs with good benefits, and these folks have really come to rely on them.”
The move’s impact may be lessened by the fact that some of the employees will be able to make the move, Madden said.
“Some of those folks that work at that plant commute from Sylva or Cullowhee. They’ll probably be able to keep their jobs.”
For those who do stay, the majority of the moves will be completed by April.
The shift in production will help bolster the company’s bottom line, Kenyon said.
“It’s not too hard to figure out the transportation advantages. Canton and Bryson City are on major highways. It just makes economic sense,” Kenyon said.
The jobs that remain in Cashiers will stay for at least a year, Kenyon said. The Bryson City and Cashiers plants will probably be hiring in coming months, he said.
The Cashiers plant, which opened in 1970 as Cashiers Plastic Corp., was founded by the late Ervin Baumrucker. The plant initially employed about 40 people, and its first products were patio chairs for Broyhill Furniture.
Under Baumrucker’s leadership, Cashiers Plastic expanded for more than a decade, becoming an industry leader in structural foam manufacturing. From furniture, the plant moved into production of IBM typewriter housings and cabinets for medical equipment and televisions.
Cashiers Plastic was purchased by ConMet-Consolidated Metco in the early 1980s. At that time ConMet was owned by Portland-based Freightliner, which was subsequently bought by Daimler-Benz. It was during that period that the company began producing plastic parts for Freightliner trucks.
Several years later, ConMet was sold to three former Freightliner executives.
Faced with increased demand from Freightliner, ConMet began operations in Bryson City in the mid-1990s. The Canton plant opened last year and is more than double the size of the Cashiers facility.
ConMet dates back to the early 1960s as an aluminum casting company and operates a plant in Monroe. The company added molded plastic parts to its manufacturing base when it purchased Cashiers Plastic in 1981.
ConMet is currenlty owned by Amsted Industries Inc., an employee-owned Chicago-based company.
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