Flooring firm transferring California operation to Georgia, eliminating 291 jobs

Shaw Industries Group is shifting its residential carpet manufacturing operations in Santa Fe Springs to northwest Georgia in a transfer that may eradicate 291 native jobs.

The corporate is also closing a plant in Yuma, Arizona, affecting 249 jobs there, the corporate mentioned.

Shaw mentioned it already is scaling again work on the two amenities and can stop operations within the first quarter of 2024.

Shaw, which has at the very least 50 distribution facilities all through the U.S., didn’t cite wages as an element within the transfer. Knowledge from Certainly.com exhibits pay ranges are significantly decrease in Georgia.

A forklift operator on the firm’s Santa Fe Springs facility averages $20.20 hourly, for instance, whereas a employee doing the identical job in Dalton earns a mean hourly wage of $15.62. And Georgia’s minimal wage of $7.25 an hour is lower than half the Golden State’s base wage of $15.50, which is able to rise to $16 an hour on Jan. 1.

The 440,000-square-foot Cypress operation is 11 miles away and employs about 170 employees.

The corporate additionally mentioned it plans to accomplice with the California Labor & Workforce Improvement Company to help displaced staff to find work elsewhere.

“We’re dedicated to supporting them throughout this transition,” mentioned Mark Hartline, vp of human assets at Shaw.

An entirely owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Shaw provides carpeting, hardwood flooring, tile, stone flooring and artificial turf to residential and business markets worldwide. The corporate generates greater than $7 billion in annual income and employs about 20,000 individuals.

In 2018, the corporate introduced it was investing $250 million to broaden and improve a producing facility in Andalusia, Ala. Two years later, Shaw mentioned it could be spending $400 million to broaden operations in Aiken County, S.C. — a transfer that was anticipated to create 300 new jobs.