Oregon’s proud cheese factory will be cutting 50 jobs in its namesake town: Tillamook Cheese announced last week that they’re slicing 50 of the 438 jobs at their famed Tillamook, Oregon factory.
In a press release sent out Friday, big cheese Harold Strunk spelled out why the factory is making the cuts:
“Because our distribution network was in Tillamook, we would literally make cheese at our factory in Boardman, then ship the cheese back to the Tillamook factory to age, then ship the cheese to a facility in Mountain Home, Idaho, to be shredded and sliced, then ship the cheese back to the Tillamook factory to be warehoused and distributed to our customers, and then in some cases the cheese would be shipped back to Idaho to our customers there.”
That system doesn’t make a lot of financial sense, but the layoffs prompted outcry on the cheese’ Facebook page (slogan: “Loaf us!”) and even online calls for a boycott.
Loaf It or Leave It????
You should be ashamed of yourself.
I’m not boycotting a company because they want to remain competitive. Do people think jobs are always going to the same throughout history or the needs won’t change?
Perhaps they should teach a course that trains kids that any job they take, anywhere, may be cut, for any reason, and to plan on losing your job and have backups, rather than assume you’ll always keep it.
Great Cheese by the way. My dad in L.A. says it’s very popular down there.
@1, The Merc staff should be applauded. They could have run with their original pun, “Tillamook Cuts the Cheese.”
Why are people unhappy about this? An Oregon company identified financial waste in their system, and moved to correct it, leaving a leaner, more efficient company. People lost jobs, but people find new jobs.