Six management personnel and pressmen from elsewhere are also losing their jobs.
Somber-faced workers gathered in the parking lot of the company’s bindery operation at 115 Yadkin Road to hear the news at a meeting Friday at 8 a.m. Word had leaked out to some employees Thursday. Some said they were caught by surprise.
Some employees who already heard the news did not show up for the official announcement. There were no questions and no tears from the employees. Many employees said they didn’t know what they would do next, except file for unemployment.
Hank Self, vice president of manufacturing, delivered the news and promised to do all he could to help employees find other jobs in the printing business. That would probably mean moving to another area.
The company’s other facility is on Access Road, off U.S 1 near Morganton Road, which used to be the editing and printing operations for Golf World magazine.
Doug Billian Sr. of Atlanta owns the company, along with three other majority shareholders, under the name of Millenium Printing. Billian told The Pilot Friday that it would be “very untrue” for anyone to say employees were caught by surprise about the closing.
“There is nobody there who could have possibly not known the conditions were tight.” Billian said
Self had been forced to cut back on the number of hours employees worked due to a slowdown in the volume of work at the plants, Billian said. He said Self did everything possible to keep the business operating.
Billian said he had hoped to make the printing company an employee-owned operation.
The reason the plants are being closed is because its customers aren’t paying, including one large company that Billian would not name. He did not say how much money the company is owed by the delinquent accounts. But he said that when property is sold off, some of that money will be used to pay debts.
At least three magazines that Billian owns — Art and Antiques, Boating World and a Spanish-language textile industry trade magazine — are printed at the Access plant in Southern Pines, which have paid their bills, Billian said.
Other magazines printed by Access included Women’s Fitness, Tennis Match, and comic books.
“I have told other people I would not be a party to bankruptcy,” Billian said. “We owe people money.”
He hopes to pay off his debts once the property is sold.
Billian said the administrative offices and a small printing press were in the 40,000 square foot plant off U.S. 1 near Morganton Road, which once housed Golf World magazine. He purchased Golf World in 1978 and sold it 10 years later.
The other Access plant, located at 115 Yadkin Road, contains between 65,000 and 70,000 square feet of space for its bindery operation, along with another printing press. The company plans to sell both buildings and the equipment.
Billian said the building on U.S. 1 will probably be sold first, and a skeleton operation will move to the Yadkin Road plant until it is sold.
Chris Wells, 23 of Aberdeen, a plant employee, said he learned he was going to lose his job earlier in the week, through an acquaintance who worked in the order department and found out that the plants would be closed.
Self told the employees the decision to close immediately had been made by Billian on Wednesday afternoon about 2 p.m. On Thursday, there was a meeting between Billian and the management, Self told The Pilot.
On Thursday, Self informed employees of the Friday morning meeting.
“It’s a sad thing, but unfortunately if you don’t have the volume (of work) coming in you can’t make money on empty presses and bindery equipment,” Self said.
Final paychecks will be ready next Friday, Self told those gathered for the meeting. Employees are being paid for the time they’ve worked, but there will be no severance pay. The company will support unemployment insurance applications.
Self told the employees that he had received calls from other printing companies outside of Moore County expressing interest in hiring some employees, such as pressmen and others whose job skills are hard to find in the printing field.
Some employees who want to continue working in the printing business will have to move to Greensboro, Raleigh and elsewhere in order to find work, Self said.
Self himself has 33 years in the printing business and has changed jobs 13 times, the last time two years ago when he came to Southern Pines to work for Access.
“It is not your fault,” he told the group of employees in the parking lot. “Sales are down, the sales we do have, customers are not forthcoming…you have to halt the bleeding.”
Billian told The Pilot large printing companies are gobbling up smaller ones, and in times when the economy is bad, the larger companies can hold out until things improve. Access isn’t big enough to do that, he said.
Self said magazine advertising is also down 23 percent compared to the year before at a time of year when it ordinarily picks up for the approaching Christmas season.
Self told The Pilot he had neither “the authority nor the money” to give severance pay.
Employees like Wells and Dennis Solomon, who is in his 40s and had been with Access for eight years, now face the prospects of going on unemployment benefits while they look for other jobs.
“They didn’t give nobody notification or nothing,” Solomon said.
Wells contacted The Pilot late Thursday about the Friday morning announcement. He had worked for Access for nine months ago and had no inkling it would close.
Wells, a native of Oklahoma, had traveled across the country doing construction work, which didn’t pay that well. He served in the military before coming to work for Access, where his girlfriend works. She told him it was a good place to work. He is concerned about health insurance.
“I can’t pay $300 to keep my own medical insurance up if I have to go on unemployment,” Wells said.
Unemployment insurance pays less than what the workers earned, and is a temporary measure designed to help them until they find another job.
Wells said he had checked with other printers in the region, but the closest one he’d found was a 45 minutes away. He doesn’t know what he will do for work.
Solomon, who lives in Southern Pines, said he had previously worked seven years with Kolcraft, a manufacturer of children’s furniture in Aberdeen before coming to Access eight years ago. Before that, he worked at Pride-Trimble, another children’s furniture maker that went out of business, which near Access’ plant on Yadkin Road.
Solomon said he was making $10 an hour at Access.
“I’ll try to get another job,” he said. He may apply to go back to Kolcraft.
Self, whose wife, Elizabeth, is the registrar for Sandhills Community College, said he’d just bought a house last October after working for Access for two years and renting while his son finished high school in another state. Self said he’d noticed a slowing down in work volume for about the last six months.
But Billian said for the past three years, he’d noticed the printing company wasn’t making money.
Self will stay around to close the two plants and probably see them through the sale of their buildings and equipment, which would take about two or three more months. He estimated equipment alone in the two Access plants in Southern Pines is worth about $1 million.
