Bristol aerospace and industrial component maker Barnes Group Inc. will lay off 400 workers, a cost-savings effort a few months after the firm reported profits falling 13% in 2020’s first quarter.
The move will cost about $18 million, mostly to pay out severance packages, said William Pitts, Barnes’ director of investor relations. But cutting staff from about 5,400 worldwide to 5,000 should save the company $30 million per year. Â Pitts said he didn’t know how many Connecticut employees will be laid off, but employees in the state are “not unaffected.”
“What we saw was a reduction in demand for our products, but also some of our customers weren’t working,” said Pitts, who added that about a third of Barnes’ business is in aerospace, with the other two-thirds in industrial components.
Barnes executives pulled the trigger on layoffs after it became clearer that an aerospace industry recovery could take several years, and the industrial components market could also take a while to bounce back. Many employees laid off were already on furlough, Pitts said.
The drop in Barnes’ profits in the first quarter came as its net sales fell 12.2% led by declines in the company’s industrial segment. Barnes’ board of directors also approved pay cuts for executives, including CEO Patrick Dempsey, who took a 30% cut, between May 1 and Oct. 31. Other corporate officers took a 15% cut to their base salaries, through the end of July.
