Trek Temporarily Furloughs 300 Workers
Google Street View of Trek’s Waterloo, WI facility.
In February 300 workers at Trek’s Waterloo, WI road and mountain bike assembly plant were forced to work one week on, one week off without pay to help the company cut costs according to a human resources manager. There are 900 employees at the Waterloo plant and in March a “smaller number” of workers continued to work one week on, one week off. Side note: did you know Trek offers tours of their Wisconsin factories? Check this out.
Anyway, getting back to last week’s discussion about MTB price trends, this seems to be another indication that demand for bikes is slowing just a bit (after all, total employment at Trek was reduced just 5% as a “proactive” measure). Lower demand means even better deals at the bike shops. Maybe bike shops will start offering mountain bike two-for-one deals like some car dealers are doing – I’ll take one XC and one DH bike please 
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March 20th, 2009 at 8:21 am
I have worked a rotating schedule like that for a couple years now, usually 3 weeks on then 3 weeks off. It surprises me that more companies arent switching to this or trying other scheduling ideas. If these employee’s are able to afford living on the the income from week on- week off once they get used to it they will be very reluctant to go back. For me the idea of going back to a 5 day work week is pretty much unthinkable at this point.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Since congress is on the whacky road to knucklehead legislation, why not get a bicycle tax credit..or even TARP for Bikes. Or we can all make ourselves “bike messengers” deliver one package a year and then write it all off….a little stimulus engineering.
So if Trek is getting slow, what about all of the offshore manus in Taiwan….shipping containers must be laying around empty everywhere.
Bodes well for more heavy discounting on bikes..and the possible demise of those companies on the edge.