Danbury home-furnishings manufacturer and retailer Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. is laying off 238 workers at a plant near the Canadian border, but will keep a sawmill and dimension mill operating at the site where Vermont, New Hampshire and Quebec meet.
The layoffs in Beecher Falls are a huge blow to the region that for generations has made its living from the vast stretches of forest in Vermont and New Hampshire.
There are few other immediate employment opportunities for Ethan Allen’s Vermont and New Hampshire workers who will lose their jobs at the end of August. Together, the town of Canaan and the adjacent community of Stewartstown, N.H., have a population of about 2,000.
Ethan Allen announced it would keep open a sawmill and dimension mill in Canaan and move to Vermont mill operations from a facility in Andover, Maine, putting 60 people out of work there. Furniture assembly operations that had been conducted in Beecher Falls will be moved to an Ethan Allen plant in Orleans.
“We very much regret the impact of this realignment to our Andover and affected Beecher Falls associates,” Ethan Allen CEO Farooq Kathwari said in a statement. “This consolidation provides an opportunity to our remaining associates in Vermont to resume a more normal work schedule.”
Vermont Labor Commissioner Patricia Moulton-Powden said 93 workers would keep their jobs in Beecher Falls. A company statement said the layoffs at Beecher Falls would be  approximately 260, but Moulton-Powden said Thursday the figure was 238.
“The word that we are hearing is that this is tied to the recession and they hope that as the economy recovers they’ll be able to hire those folks back,” she said.
The company has been one of the economic engines of northeastern Vermont, an area known as the Northeast Kingdom, which has few manufacturing jobs, especially in the remote area along the Canada and New Hampshire borders. (AP)
