Conway company shuts down, leaving nearly 100 workers jobless

Conway, Arkansas – Following the closure of the only Structurlam company in the US on Wednesday, a lumber company in Conway let go of more than 100 staff.

After 144 employees were let go, the warehouse that was once humming with activity and machines working is now quiet.

“Structurlam had one customer and we recently got notified unexpectedly that the customer was canceling their contract, which led us to curtailing operations,” Manager Jody Doak said.

Employees claimed that they were anxious when they noticed the 6 a.m. meeting on their schedules and that is when they found out the news.

“Doak says they are going to have to close the plant for a while and try to find other work for us to do, in the meantime, everybody’s laid off,” Structurlam employee Robert McGarrell said.

According to Robert McGarrell, it was heartbreaking.

“It was a gut punch, as a matter of fact, it was awful, there were tears shed and it was just disbelief,” McGarrell said.

“It was a very difficult day. As you can imagine, anytime you are dealing with a person’s livelihood it’s traumatic. It’s traumatic for the people delivering the news, it’s more traumatic for the people receiving the news. We really think a lot of our employees and we look forward to them coming back,” Doak stated.

How long will this persist, though? Hopefully not too long, but it really depends on the jobs they can land, said to Plant Manager Jody Doak.

“It’s very short term is what we are looking at again it’s hard to put a timeline on it, some of these projects take a year or more to get the engineering and everything, other projects are a couple weeks,” Doak.

According to the corporation, 24 crew members will remain on staff to maintain the plant.

Robert McGarrell stated that he is now still looking for employment in order to try and stay afloat and that he expects they will soon receive projects in order to reopen the hiring process.