AKRON, Ohio — GOJO, the manufacturer of Purell and other products that is headquartered in Akron, announced Friday they are eliminating a shift at their manufacturing facility in Cuyahoga Falls.
In a statement to News 5, the company did not specify how many workers would be affected by the “scheduling adjustment,” but said the facility was moving from three shifts to two because they “no longer need to produce at the unprecedented levels required at the peak of the pandemic.”
The company said they are helping impacted team members transition to other shifts or to another job outside the company.
“We don’t anticipate having to take similar actions with GOJO team members at our other manufacturing and distribution facilities,” a representative for the company stated. “Decisions that negatively impact any of our team members are always difficult to make and are only made after careful consideration.”
Throughout 2020, the company hired additional workers and ramped up production of their Purell hand sanitizer and other hygiene products. In November of last year, the company even leased 700,000 square feet of space in the shuttered I-X Center to store additional inventory. At the time, the company said it had been producing and shipping 300% more hand sanitizer than the previous year due to the coronavirus pandemic. They leased an additional 200,000 square feet there in April under a lease until Sept. 30, 2021.
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