32 Fibre managers let go over two days of cuts

Tag : paper fibre

Longview Fibre Paper and Packaging Co. terminated 32 salariedsupervisors this week as further details emerged Wednesday aboutthe latest phase of the company’s cost-cutting plan.

The company began this round of cuts Tuesday and continuedWednesday. The number of operations supervisors in Longview willdrop from 146 to 114, according to the company.

The company expects to trim about 18 additional salariedsupervisors within the next year, for a total of about 50 cuts,according to Fibre President Frank McShane.

The terminated employees will get one week of severance pay forevery year of service up to 10 weeks.

As early as May, the salaried employees were asked to reapply fortheir jobs in an effort to trim the workforce. Fibre officials havenot ruled out future job reductions beyond the announced plan.

Fibre officials are also discussing a plan to lay off about 50hourly union employees. Company officials are currently in talkswith the employees’ union, the Association of Western Pulpand Paper Workers Local 153, and no date has been set for the cuts,according to the company.

All of these job reductions are part of the plan Fibre officialsannounced last fall to cut 200 hourly and salaried employees by themiddle of this year and an additional 100 employees by 2010. InJanuary, the company shut down money-losing paper machines Nos. 2and 8.

Six months earlier, the Fibre board of directors sold the publiclytraded company to the Canadian firm Brookfield ManagementAssociates for $2.15 billion, ending 80 years of local managementby the Wollenberg family. The company’s pulp and paperoperations had been losing millions annually before the sale.

This week’s wave of supervisor cuts is not the first timesalaried positions have been eliminated. In the spring of 2007,Fibre began laying off supervisors when it sold its two box plants.Further cuts were made when Fibre shut down its aging Nos. 2 and 8paper machines in December.