Shrinking Custom Molders survives D-Day


Custom Molders is on Peter Gill Road, just past Bobbitt Road.

April should mark the second anniversary of the Detroit-based Piston Group’s purchase of Henderson manufacturer Custom Molders, but there might not be anyone left at the plastic injection molding factory on Peter Gill Road to celebrate.

Company officials aren’t talking, but Custom Molders gave the state official notification of a mass layoff and likely plant closure Feb. 24. In a letter that day to the state Division of Employment and Training, Custom Molders cited last Friday, March 12, as the date when most operations in Henderson would cease.

Custom Molders did not shut down that day, but it did lay off many of its estimated 130 employees. Some of them attended the Small Business Opportunities Forum held in downtown Henderson the next day.

Sara Wester, who heads the Henderson office of the Employment Security Commission, said a total of at least 40 ousted Custom Molders employees filed for unemployment benefits last week and this week.

“I truly don’t know how many they have laid off. I know they have not closed,” Wester said Wednesday.

Piston Group Chief Financial Officer Serge Thomas, reached on his cellphone, refused to comment Wednesday. “I have nothing to say.”

The Piston Group’s Vicki Head, however, said she thought Thomas was in North Carolina this week, a visit that might indicate Thomas is working on the fate of Custom Molders.

If it closes, it will be the latest blow to Vance County’s shrinking manufacturing base, which has lost jobs by the hundreds from companies such as Harriet & Henderson Yarns, Americal and J.P. Taylor Tobacco. But unlike those textile and tobacco losses, Custom Molders is not claiming that foreign competition is the source of its problems, Wester said.

Rumors have flown around Henderson since early January, when, according to its Feb. 24 letter to the Division of Employment and Training, Custom Molders notified its employees that their jobs were endangered.

Citing anonymous sources, The Daily Dispatch ran an article on the company’s suspected demise Jan. 29. Thomas declined comment in that report.

But Custom Molders’ official notification of the pending layoff pointed to Feb. 9 as the key date, said Lovieree Warren, an employment and training specialist in the state office that received the letter.

On that date, Custom Molders officials wrote, a major customer announced the end of their business relationship, effective March 12. That date therefore was projected as the last day for most workers, although the letter said some employees might be “extended” beyond March 12.

That apparently has happened. Some work goes on at the Henderson facility, “a manufacturer of quality products for the transportation, communication, data processing, and food service industries,” according to Custom Molders’ Web site.

Custom Molders was founded in 1974 and was sold at least one time before former NBA player Vinnie Johnson’s Piston Group bought the business in April 2003.

Robert Byerly, listed as the contact in Custom Molders’ layoff notification to the state, did not return a phone message for comment Thursday.

The written notification Feb. 24 was meant to meet Custom Molders’ obligations under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which generally calls for 60 days’ notice of major layoffs or plant closings.

Warren said the thresholds for the WARN Act generally are 50 lost jobs in a company of at least 100 employees. Although Custom Molders meets those minimums, there are numerous exceptions to the 60-day requirement, so it’s not clear whether the company was in compliance with the law.

Because WARN is a federal law, the state has no enforcement role and no penalties when the letter of the law is violated. Warren said an employee who believed that his or her rights under WARN had been violated could take action in District Court.

But those workers were warned in January, and Wester said a rapid-response team visited the Henderson plant a couple of weeks ago to share information on transition services for the employees.

Also, Warren said one of the exceptions to WARN is hardship, such as when a company must confront the loss of a major customer.

Custom Molders lost such a customer when Ford Motor ended their longtime business relationship.

Local activist Andrea Harris said she and Abdul Rasheed traveled to Detroit around the end of February to talk to the Piston Group and Ford about saving the jobs at Custom Molders.

Harris said the trip grew out her friendship with one of Custom Molders’ original owners, Franklin Anderson, and an existing business relationship with a Ford official, Renaldo Jensen , who heads supplier diversity for the automaker. Harris runs the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development.

Thomas told her that the decision had been made to close Custom Molders, Harris said.

“Maybe if we’d known two to three months earlier, maybe there’s something we could have done to avoid that,” Harris said this week.

While Ford ended its purchases from Custom Molders, it did not eliminate the need for the parts, she said. Instead, Ford transferred the work to a company in Alamance County to maintain the same employment level in North Carolina.

In its WARN notification letter, Custom Molders cited a “limitless effort” by its management team to find new business to keep the plant open. As long as the plant is still running, the Piston Group still could inject fresh hope into Henderson’s economy.