the economy is taking it's toll

[carolina-rig-01]

well up until now we have been very luck around here. our area has been hit to a lesser extent than most as far as losing jobs and such goes. yesterday i was told that they are cutting our hours at work. we normally work 48hrs one week and 36hrs the next with anything over 36hrs being time and a half, so we really made our money on the long weeks. well now we are going down to 24hrs one week and 36hrs the next so there is no overtime. part of this is due to the economy but in large part it is weather related. we make vinyl siding and our biggest accounts are in minnesota where the high for the next few days will be -1 degrees, so there isn't much vinyl being hung. add this to an already rough housing market and it looks kinda bad. in fact the plant leader said "there is no end in sight". as bad as that sounds i really think it isn't going to be that bad. our business usually picks up in mid march and he said that we are probably looking at 6 weeks worth of this short work schedule so i guess we are still lucky to be working at all. plus it gives me a chance to really work on the jig company as well. the part that makes me mad is that we get our work schedule at the end of december for the whole next year, so we know a year ahead of time what days we have off. but you can't make any plans for the summer becuase of overtime. i mean you can have a trip planned for 6 months and then have to cancel it a week before you go because they make you work overtime. so we tried to plan on going to shreveport for the classic and then ky for the get together while things would be slow. then they pull this crap on us, when are we supposed to do anything (i know they don't care if we go on vacations or not). we are still somewhat planning on making the classic and the get togethere both so we'll just have to see where the chips fall.