Kosciusko County and Warsaw’s largest employer, Zimmer Biomet, will be reducing their workforce temporarily due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Zimmer Biomet Vice President of External Communications Monica Kendrick, said in an e-mail to News Now Warsaw, “We have decided to temporarily reduce operations in all North America plants for two weeks starting April 13, with only critical lines continuing to run. During this time, affected team members will be paid at 80% of their salary.”
Kendrick did not immediately elaborate on what critical lines would be continuing to operate.
Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer was asked about the reduction. He said that the COVID-19 pandemic is a global concern that found its way into the local community. He continued that both nationally and locally, the economy was in very good shape until the coronavirus hit.
“Locally, many small businesses and some industry have already been hit very hard. Given that, the workforce reduction at (Zimmer Biomet) is not surprising. Since the pandemic began, public health concerns and the shutdown of the economy has played into the hard decisions our country has faced to control the spread.”
Thallemer said Zimmer Biomet’s reduction will “certainly add to the temporary economic distress in (the) community,” but like everyone else in the community, the city is hopeful that the restrictions will be beneficial in controlling the disease and will lead to a significant rebound.
We are working on getting more details for this story and will update it once we get more information.
