GE plans worker furloughs

One of the Charlottesville region’s largest employers is temporarily laying off half its workforce.

GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, which is headquartered in Albemarle County, confirmed Tuesday that roughly 300 of its 600 workers will be furloughed for two weeks beginning next week.

GE Fanuc’s latest round of cuts come on the heels of the company’s announcement in mid-January that it was permanently laying off around 50 employees.

Elli Holman, a GE Fanuc spokeswoman, said the reductions were necessary because of the global economic slowdown.

“It’s affecting everyone,” she said.

GE Fanuc is a joint venture between General Electric Co. and Japan’s Fanuc LTD, a company that specializes in automation and robotics. The Albemarle County facility builds hardware and software for manufacturing companies.

The company’s 300 furloughed workers will not receive hourly pay during the two weeks, but will receive benefits. Holman said the workers are also being offered the option of using vacation days. Plus, she said, workers may seek unemployment benefits during the two weeks.

GE Fanuc is the Charlottesville region’s third largest private employer, according to the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development.

For the 12-month period ending in November, the Charlottesville region lost 900 jobs, or 0.9 percent of its total labor force, according to the latest statistics from the Virginia Employment Com-mission. Out of the state’s nine metropolitan areas, only Richmond lost more jobs than Charlottesville.

Despite the job losses, the Charlottesville area’s unemployment rate remains relatively low. As of December, the region had the state’s second lowest jobless rate of 4.2 percent, behind only Northern Virginia’s rate of 3.9 percent.

GE Fanuc is not the first major Virginia company to resort to temporary layoffs. The Hershey Co. gave notice last week that it was furloughing 148 employees at its Stuarts Draft plant for a month beginning this past Monday.

Other local companies are turning to more permanent staffing cuts. Biotage, a Swedish pharmaceutical firm, announced in late January that it was closing its facility in the University of Virginia’s North Fork Research Park and was laying off 50 employees. According to a new state filing posted Tuesday, Biotage had upped that figure to 65 local layoffs by May 15.