Two Canadian furniture companies, Dorel Industries and Palliser Furniture, laid off workers in North America.

Dorel is transitioning its Ameriwood Home furniture manufacturing facility in Tiffin, Ohio, to a distribution and warehouse operation resulting in the loss of 130 workers. Palliser is temporarily laying off 40 workers due to sales slowdown, but the company CEO expects to bring the workers back later this year.

Dorel Home filed a  Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice on July 8 in Ohio. According to the notice, "This reduction is a result of a significant downturn in our business. Our parent company Dorel has been forced to make some hard financial decisions to survive this economy. One of these changes is to repurpose the Tiffin facility from a manufacturing operation to a Distribution and Warehouse Operation supporting Dorel.

Production operations will be moved along with the remaining equipment to our other production facilities. Tiffin will be converted to the Ohio Distribution Center and will need to be staffed with/retained employees of a minimum of 40 hourly and salary jobs. This means a drastic change to the number of employees that will be needed going forward and the permanent elimination of a large number of jobs in Tiffin effective July 8th, 2024, and the switch being made sixty (60) days later and the last day of production will on September 5th, 2024."

In March, Montreal-based Dorel Industries embarked on a $4.5 million cost-cutting, restructuring plan that will include the layoff of 70 workers from its Dorel Home and Dorel Juvenile divisions and the combining of operating units. The restructuring’s $4.5 million price tag was expected to return $6.5 million in savings spread throughout 2024.  

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, some 40 workers at Palliser have been temporarily laid off. The action is a result of “lower orders that have been impacting the entire furniture industry,” chief executive Peter Tielmann told the newspaper in a text message.

“Order levels have still not rebalanced since (a) COVID surge and post-COVID drop,” he said. Palliser expects to return to full capacity by late August in preparation for a busier autumn season, according to the report.

Dorel is an FDMC 300 listed company, ranking #19 in the list.