Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Goodrich not closing

After a visit to Clark County on Tuesday, Gov. Mike Huckabee announced Wednesday the Goodrich plant will remain open in the Clark County Industrial Park and will eventually employ about 250 people.

Several employees to the plant are from the Gurdon area. Many of them have already been laid off, and others were making plans to find other jobs.

The plant had been scheduled to close by August, and about 80 employees had been laid off since the initial decision was made last December to close the plant.

In the surprise announcement made at the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Huckabee said Goodrich Aero structures and Aviation Technical Services will not only keep the Arkadelphia plant open, but will eventually expand it.

"The good news is we saved the jobs that were going to be lost," the governor said in a late afternoon press conference. "The better news is we'll be adding a number of jobs to the original total of 175. Over time, the Clark County plant will employ well beyond 175 Arkansans. And the newly created positions will be good-paying jobs, the very type of jobs we're trying to attract to Arkansas. I want to sincerely thank the people at Goodrich for making this decision."

Mike Piscatella, group president for the Charlotte, N.C.-based industry, also spoke at Wednesday's news conference. He said the decision to keep the Arkadelphia plant open, retool it for a different product and eventually expand its staff was due to several reasons.

"The decision to keep Arkadelphia open is a result of many factors, primarily a well-trained, dedicated workforce; the support of local and state elected officials; and the opportunity for Goodrich Aero structures to maintain a geographically diverse manufacturing base," he said.

The decision to keep the plant open drew immediate praise from Arkadelphia government and business leaders.

State Sen. Percy Malone, who immediately asked Piscatella to reconsider the plant closure last December, lauded the company's decision to keep the Arkadelphia Industrial Park plant open.

"It's great news," Malone said. He said he was "excited" that the Goodrich workers would be able to keep their jobs.

Malone said the ongoing talks have centered on potential new products to be manufactured at the existing plant here. He said Huckabee and officials of the Arkansas Department of Economic Development were also involved in the discussions about whether to and/or how to keep the plant open.

He said the decision to keep the plant open will be an economic boon to Arkadelphia and Clark County.

"Instead of us losing 181 jobs, we now have 250 jobs that will be there over some period of time, and hopefully, it will grow from there."

Malone said the company intends to retool the current plant and manufacture a different line of aerospace products.

"It's going to be a completely different mission statement for that facility. It's going to be manufacturing parts for new airplanes."

He said the retooling will start as soon as possible and there will likely be some more layoffs at the plant before the plant renovation begins.

"They're going to start at around 80 jobs and then grow from there. We think that they're going to wrap up rather quickly," said Malone. "I've been working with them and working with ADED to be able to help put the package together that would give them an opportunity to keep this facility open and have these jobs protected in Arkansas."

Clark County Industrial Council President Brown Hardman heaped equal praise on the Goodrich decision. He said much of the decision had to do with a change in company presidents. He said Piscatella has a different business philosophy than the company's former president  and that led to the decision to keep the Arkadelphia plant open.

He said he thought Goodrich decided to keep the plant open because of the availability of worker training here. He said the plant was one of the main reasons that the Southwest Arkansas Technology Learning Center was created.

"They know that we're going to have the ability to give customized training to whatever they want to do down there," Hardman said. "I think that was one of the reasons that they rethought this and made the decision to stay."

Business and government officials were not the only people happy the plant intends to stay open. Garry Moore and Bobbie Ross were laid off at the plant recently. They will be married on Saturday and were marginally optimistic this morning they may eventually get re-employed at the plant. The couple has not been contacted about returning to work, however.

"It's good it's reopening, but we haven't heard anything about us getting our jobs back," Moore said. "There's hope there. Any glimmer of hope is good."

Ross echoed her fiance's feelings.

"I think it's good  we haven't heard anything about us getting our jobs back," Ross said. "But it's a hope."