
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 2, 1990                   TAG: 9006020080
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

SINGER CONSIDERS EMPLOYEE RECALLS

The 80 to 100 Singer Furniture employees furloughed in Roanoke about a month ago may be recalled by the fourth quarter if growth in the furniture market continues, Dennis Ammons, new president of the company, said Friday.

An earlier report of 200 layoffs at Singer from the Virginia Employment Commission was not accurate, Ammons said.

Although the furniture industry has gone through a slow market and short factory schedules this spring, Ammons said the outlook for his company's bedroom furniture in the last four or five weeks was the best since the last quarter of 1988. "We had a heck of a turnaround and we're pretty enthusiastic," he said.

The late April furloughs in the company's work force of 525 were necessary to bring production capacity in line with incoming orders, according to Ammons.

For more than a year, the plant had been working a lot of 32-hour weeks to accommodate the reduced order rate, he said. Ammons said the job cuts were needed to make the company profitable and to protect the jobs of the remaining employees. They will be working full time, he said.

Ammons, a leader in the management-investor buyout of Singer Furniture last month, said the company "is here to stay."

The group of about 20 managers and investors bought the company from another group led by Paul Bilzerian, a corporate raider convicted of securities fraud. Ammons said the acquisition involves a comparatively low debt burden.

- Staff report

by CNB