Solo Cup closing part of sad manufacturing trend
Solo Cup gets a few Brownie points for giving hundreds of employees two years' notice that they'll be losing their jobs. The company announced today that it will close its Owings Mills plant in 2012. Employees getting put out of work rarely get this much warning. It's a small consolation, but it's something. With luck and compassion people will get decent severance packages, too.
Ironically, Solo's early warning may be a sad commentary on the economy and the manufacturing economy especially. Downsizing companies normally don't like to telegraph their intentions. That's because employees will start quitting to find longer-term positions, which can complicate operations in the meantime. If you want to run until 2012 and half the workers quit in 2011, you've got a problem.
But in this economy the prospects for finding decent positions for manufacturing workers may be discouraging enough that Solo figured it could take the risk. As the Labor Department graph below shows, Maryland manufacturing employment is about down to 100,000, half of what it was two decades ago. With a slow recovery from a recession and national unemployment near 10 percent, Solo apparently figures it will keep most of the workers at the closing plants until the bitter end. 
Comments
I worked at Solo (Sweetheart) for 32 years and was thankful to have met so many good people. They were a great company to be part of and I wish all the best for the last of the employees.
Posted by: Ed Poe | June 8, 2010 9:17 PM
We can all just work for the government.
Posted by: DOUG | June 8, 2010 9:28 PM
don't be confused into thinking that government employment is that 'security blanket' that has been advertised for so many decades. there are ways, means & tactics to give a government employee even less of a foothold on their own jobs despite their performance.
and with a rising deficit [both local and federal gov] no employee is safe.
Posted by: space | June 9, 2010 10:04 AM
Way to go Marty. Another MD business bites the dust. There shouldn't be too many left for you to drive away!
Posted by: outtahere | June 9, 2010 10:17 AM
Why is this a "sad manufacturing trend"? Out with the old, in with the new. Global trade is a double-edged sword. We lose low-paying manufacturing jobs and in exchange, we grow higher skilled (and higher paying) manufacturing and service jobs.
Outtahere, why aren't you "outtahere" yet? I'm not sure if you read the original article too closely. The Solo plant on the Eastern Shore is actually growing.
Posted by: IPFrehley | June 9, 2010 11:24 AM
Hey IPFrehley -
Stop clinging to the fact that Solo on Eastern Shore is "gaining jobs". Don't you see the graph? What does that tell you?
Why did Northrop Grumman choose VA over MD? Those were high paying HQ exec jobs...
MD is and always has been very Democratic and very business unfriendly....Do these correlate?
Go, Ehrlich, GO!!!
Posted by: patman | June 9, 2010 4:46 PM
The graph tells me that we are losing manufacturing employment. If we put services employment on this same graph, you would see an opposite trend. You can't answer why that is a bad thing.
My point about Solo growing on the Eastern Shore was to point out that they aren't pulling out of Maryland.
I'm not sure why you want to elect Ehrlich. The guy was responsible for 6.6% annual spending growth during his term. This means that he raised taxes by 6.6% annually (because we have a balanced budget requirement), a pace far worse than any other governor in MD history.
Posted by: IPFrehley | June 10, 2010 9:03 AM
i am an employee of Kop-Flex, inc.(Emerson Industrial Automation) located at 7565 Harmans Road, Hanover, Md . After 65yrs of manufacturing we have been notifed that the plant is closing and at least 100 men and women will lose their jobs. Some work will be outsourced to other countries and out of state.
Posted by: Wallace Brown | June 29, 2010 8:09 PM