Chemical giant DuPont has announced a global effort to cut personnel costs. The company's salaried workers are being asked to take two-weeks off without pay before the end of the year. The move will impact the company's plants in Kanawha and Wood counties.
Belle plant Human Resources Manager Roger Hess says there are approximately 125 salaried workers at the plant in Kanawha County and he expects most of them to agree with the time off. "Our site and DuPont as a whole has been known to get behind things like this and go for the cause and help the company to be successful," he said.
Salaried workers are typically engineers, supervisors and plant managers.
The announcement does not included hourly workers at the plants. The Belle plant has 400 hourly workers and approximately 75 contract workers on site. There are more than 1,800 workers at the Washington Works plant in Wood County and 450 contractors.
Hess says salaried workers can take a week off at a time without pay or a day off at a time without pay. "We are leaving it up to them to determine how they want to do it and how they could best work it in to meet their needs," he said.
DuPont's 75 global officers have announced they will take off three weeks without pay.
"We're trying to save cash in the current economic crisis," Hess said. "This approach will help preserve jobs across the company and enable us to respond when the global economy rebounds. We will be ready to go."
