Burton laying off staff and reducing salaries

“This has been a very painful process for us, and considering the global economic situation, we’ve done everything in our power to save as many jobs as possible,” says Burton CEO Laurent Potdevin. “Our goal this entire year has been to cut as many costs as possible on a global level, like sales meetings, travel and new hires so that we could avoid cutting people. Instead of a much larger number of layoffs, we decided to take a different approach, which is temporarily reducing salaries on a sliding scale from 0-15% for employees in North America.”
 

The highest-paid employees face the biggest wage cuts and owners Jake and Donna Carpenter are eliminating their salaries entirely. All bonuses have been cancelled and the company's 401K match this year has been temporarily reduced form 4% to 1%.
 

Globally Burton employs 962 people but has laid off some people (less than 5% they say) to bring their North American headcount to 663.
 

“The shareholders at Burton are my wife Donna and myself,” says Jake Burton Carpenter, Founder and Chairman of Burton. “Our goals for Burton are not short-term, but the long-term prosperity of our brands, boardsports and the people involved. Donna and I want to thank our dedicated employees for their contribution to the company’s cause through a temporary pay reduction. The bottom line is that their sacrifice is preventing a far more significant layoff and will allow us to come out of this economic downturn stronger than ever.”
 

Clearly the boardsports industry is facing challenging times and it's interesting to see Burton being so upfront about the issues they are facing. It'll be interesting to see how other brands handle the crisis. If you've seen or heard of anything interesting on this subject, leave us a comment below.