Napoleon temporarily cuts 100 manufacturing jobs in Barrie

NEWS -

North America’s largest privately-owned fireplace manufacturer, Napoleon, has temporarily laid off around 100 workers at manufacturing facilities in Barrie.

The layoffs started on Tuesday, impacting manufacturing associates hired in 2021 and later.

“Through COVID, we had that extreme demand and hired a massive amount of people during that peak, and really we are continuing to right size,” said Mike Tzimas, president of Napoleon.

“We are still about eight to ten per cent higher total employees than we were pre-pandemic, and we expect that to ramp back up as things start to normalize.”

In September, Napoleon announced 80 layoffs of permanent full-time associates from Barrie locations.

“Unfortunately, it’s the same thing we are seeing as we did with the previous layoffs in September, this time there is a key difference it is a layoff. We do expect a portion or all coming back in the New Year,” said Tzimas.

“It’s never a good time, but unfortunately, for the long-term sustainability of the organization, we had to make these tough decisions and really, that’s why we had the gap between September and now. We really worked with our partners to understand the accuracy of their forecast and what we needed to build to do to satisfy market demands.”

The company said those laid-off employees would keep their benefits and be back at work at the earliest time available.