(1-7-20) Crown Equipment Corp. Tuesday offered a voluntary layoff program to employees, in a bid to avoid or minimize involuntary layoffs.
Crown has about 5,000 employees total in Ohio. About 4,500 of those workers are in New Bremen. Other Crown facilities include Fort Loramie, component facilities in Celina, New Knoxville and Minster and a storage facility in Greenville.
Randy Niekamp, vice president of human resources for Crown-
“Basically, the global lift truck market has been down over the past few months. Our new truck orders have been down.”
“We don’t have a crystal ball, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. With the political landscape, with tariffs, with things like that, all of that has an effect. It’s definitely not something we want to deal with, but we’re trying to deal with it as best we can to minimize the effect on our employees.”
In recent unemployment numbers for the State of Ohio both Auglaize and Mercer County have some of the lowest rates.
Mercer County Outlook 
Crown has apparently fallen asleep in the marketplace. The statement by their HR department is anemic and all involved should feel at fault. Not managing the horizon and managing the moment is short sided and detrimental to proactive management. The crystal ball comment is 1950’s mentality and to make a political statement only exacerbates the situation Crown management has put their hourly worker in.
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