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Just a few months ago, Fulflex was little-known, a longtime Brattleboro company that made elastic for underwear, medical products and other goods with a partner in India.
Hardly anyone in the region knew Fulflex was there, even though it had about 100 employees, and even fewer knew what it did, said Vice President of Operations Don Venice, who has been with the company since 1975.
But that was before the Covid-19 pandemic made medical masks into a must-have item. Although unemployment in Vermont has soared in the Covid-19 crisis from about 2.4% to an estimated 20%, Fulflex and many other employers around the state are trying to hire.
Venice is on the phone with customers 80 hours a week, juggling the demands of factories in China and India — where most of the masks are made. Meanwhile, he’s meeting requests from home mask-makers as far away as Texas and Florida, who have found Fulflex online and are desperate for more elastic.
Fulflex is trying to hire more workers to increase production, but he’s not receiving many applications, Venice said. About four weeks ago, Venice started trying to hire about 30 new workers to increase capacity. So far, he’s only been able to hire eight.
Fulflex pays $20 per hour, and Venice thinks part of the problem is that workers can make more through state and federal employment benefits by staying home. The maximum weekly state benefit is more than $500, and the federal CARES Act is paying an additional $600 weekly benefit through July to workers who can’t find jobs.
“With some of the layoffs in the area, we were expecting that we would be flooded with applications,” he said. “But they are trickling in.”
Other companies, including High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott, have been running help-wanted advertisements on Front Porch Forum. Grocery stores and manufacturers such as Cabot Creamery and First Light in Poultney, which has also seen business increase during the pandemic, are trying to hire more workers.
High Mowing Seeds has seen customer demand rise as much as 300% year-over-year, depending on the product, and recently hired 12 people to create a second shift. The company is still looking for four more, said Andrea Tursini, High Mowing’s director of sales and marketing.
Tursini said that while the company’s location always presents a challenge in hiring, she’s confident the last four spots will be filled soon. “I like to think it’s productive and hopeful to be working here right now, however tempting it might be to stay at home and get paid $15 hour,” said Tursini. “This work, I think, feels good.”
Champlain Cable, a wire and cable manufacturer in Colchester, furloughed about 45 people when customer orders started to drop, but is already planning to bring back some workers starting on May 4, said CEO Bill Reichert. The company continued to pay medical and dental benefits to the people who left their jobs, and Reichert thinks that will help draw them back, although they won’t be making as much as they would on unemployment.
“It’s going to be an interesting dynamic,” said Reichert, adding the company paid medical benefits “on purpose, because we didn’t want to just toss them out and say, ‘Thanks, see you later if we need you.’ We wanted them to understand we wanted to bring them back.”
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, it was difficult to find health care workers. It’s not getting easier, Wake Robin CEO Martha Maksym said in a March 31 letter to lawmakers.
Allowing employees to voluntarily resign from a job for a host of reasons outlined in H.742, emergency legislation that Vermont lawmakers passed in March “could decimate our workforce,” Maksym wrote. She said every position at Wake Robin, with the exception of RNs, some managers, and the leadership team, would make more by going on unemployment.
Maksym said “we are extremely concerned about how we would continue to provide the care we are providing to our residents, especially those most vulnerable in our health center, if we lose our workforce,” she wrote. “I assume we are not alone in this concern.”
A legislative fix?
Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, is leading the Senate committee that is trying to come up with a bonus that will keep people at work.
Senate Appropriations expects to move a proposal in the coming days, which Kitchel said would likely provide grants — of an amount not yet determined — to health care workers and other frontline workers, who, by staying on the job, put themselves at risk of infection and make less than they would with unemployment benefits.
“There is no question that the $600 a week add-on has created some concern on the part of employers,” Kitchel said of the federal unemployment supplement, which equates to pay of $15 per hour, on top of state unemployment insurance. “I think it’s a pretty universal concern.”
Asked about the lawmakers’ grants plan on April 20, Gov. Phil Scott said he would wait until he saw a proposal. But he sounded lukewarm, citing the many other costs that Vermont is facing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The lawmakers’ plan — which wouldn’t pay enough to equal the $600 per week from the federal government — would only include sectors such as nursing homes, grocery stores, and sanitation.
That won’t make a difference for Fulflex.
Venice said he’s grateful to those who do choose to work.
“There are people who understand that this unemployment situation isn’t going to happen forever, and now is the time, while you are unemployed, to find good employment,” he said.
