Fort Mill, South Carolina – Stanley Black & Decker recently announced that it is closing its tool manufacturing plant near Carowinds in Fort Mill. This move is expected to affect the local economy and workforce. This move is set to result in the loss of 192 jobs, which will significantly change the industrial landscape in the area.
The decision to close the building at 4260 Pleasant Road was made public on Monday through a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) letter that was sent to the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. This notice is a legal requirement for companies intending to execute large-scale layoffs or facility closures. The filing says that the process of shutting down the plant will begin on May 10 and end by the end of the current year.
Stanley Black & Decker’s factory in Fort Mill is famous for making DEWALT cordless power tools, which are a well-known name in the hardware industry for their reliability and quality. This closing is a big change from what the company said in 2017 when it claimed it would spend $31 million in a new 345,000-square-foot building at Lakemont Business Park. Positioned across from the Carowinds amusement park, this move was meant to create 500 new jobs in York County and help the area’s economic growth.
This is the 11th WARN warning that has been sent out in South Carolina this year, but it is the first one that affects the Rock Hill region. It also has the second-largest job effect in the state from a single closure this year, trailing only behind the MAHLE Behr closure in Charleston County, which affected 466 workers.
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The economic impact and employee layoffs
Steve Maddocks, the company’s global vice president of manufacturing operations, says that the plant will cease operations in four steps beginning this spring.
The process of closing the plant will begin on May 10 with the layoff of 158 employees. This will significantly reduce the number of people working at the plant. Ten more workers are set to leave on July 15. In later stages, another dozen workers will be let go by September 15 and another dozen by the end of the year. By the conclusion of this structured shutdown, all positions at the Fort Mill facility will be permanently eliminated.
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There is, however, a chance for the workers to be transferred to other locations. While Maddocks was talking about the possibility of transfer offers to other places for some workers, he didn’t give any specifics about these chances.
