A married Iowa couple were laid off by John Deere on the same day as part of a massive wave of personnel downsizing after sales at the agricultural machinery company took a plummet.
Mathew Shiltz and his wife were let go from the John Deere’s Davenport Works manufacturing plant in Eastern Iowa in July, among thousands of others across the company, WSAW reported.
“It was tough. I mean, we kind of already knew it. When I had heard it I was, I was on second shift. So the first-shift meeting had already happened. So when I got to work at noon that day, people had told me and we kind of knew it was happening beforehand,” Shiltz told the outlet.
While he was “proud” to work for John Deere, he now feels betrayed.
“When I got hired on Deere, I was proud,” he said.
“This community and the Quad Cities is heavily Deere-based with four plants in the area. So when they take these kinds of hits, it doesn’t just affect Deere, it affects a lot of people,” he explained.
Shiltz has already had to take odd jobs to make up for the loss of income.
“I went and helped a guy move a washer, do some mowing, just try and pick up some cash jobs to keep my unemployment, you know, but that’s it. It’s going to be hard for me, really hard,” he continued, adding that he is worried for when he and his wife’s severance packages run out.
“And now we’re just, now we’re just trying to figure out how we’re going to pay the bills.”
John Deere has laid off about 2,000 employees just this year alone, according to WSAW.
Company officials have said that sales are down by 20 percent, so cutting back on the workforce was necessary.
However, the United Auto Workers union claimed the mass firings are happening because of “corporate greed.”
“Let’s be clear: there is no need for Deere to kill good American jobs and outsource them to Mexico for cheap labor. The company is forecasted to make $7 billion in profit this year. CEO John May’s total compensation for 2023 was $26.8 million,” the union said in a Tuesday statement.
John Deere defended its decision in a statement to the Des Moines Register.
“As the largest global manufacturer of agricultural equipment, John Deere, like many others in the industry, faces significant economic challenges, including rising global operational and manufacturing costs, and reduced customer demand,” the company said. “These changes are being made due to reduced demand for the products produced at these facilities. As stated in our second quarter earnings call, industry sales are expected to decline 20 percent from 2023 to 2024.”
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