Ashley Furniture HomeStore To Shut Down Colton Warehouse, Lays Off 840 Workers

COLTON (CBSLA.com) — Hundreds of Inland Empire workers are reeling after their jobs at an Ashley Furniture HomeStore were slashed.

About 840 employees were laid off after being called to meetings at the National Orange Show Events Center in San Bernardino or the Riverside Convention Center Friday morning, according to the San Bernardino County Sun.

The company's 19 Southern California retail store locations in Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino County, along with a distribution center in Redlands, remain unaffected at this time.

Laid-off employees were reportedly given 60 days' notice in a statement that said that the plant would be shut down on Oct. 25. The company said that they would be moving the majority of their production to U.S. plants in Wisconsin, Mississippi and North Carolina to "tap into existing capacity and increase efficiency," according to the Sun.