[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 25 (Tuesday, February 8, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S568-S570]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  RECOGNIZING LANDMARK MAPLE WOODCRAFT

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the holiday season having just passed is a 
wonderful reminder that the products of many small, local businesses 
often make the best gifts. I would like to take some time today to 
highlight Maple Landmark Woodcraft, a

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Vermont business that I have turned to year after year for gifts for 
our children, grandchildren, other relatives and friends.
  Today, Maple Landmark is one of the most prominent handmade wooden 
toy manufacturers in the United States. However, like many businesses, 
it started small, in Mike Rainville's family woodshop in rural Vermont 
in the 1980s. Mike's business began with building and selling mostly 
cribbage boards and tic-tac-toe games, but quickly grew to encompass a 
wide range of toys, games, puzzles, and home decorations. Among Maple 
Landmark's most famous products are the wooden letter train sets that 
have graced the bedrooms of millions of children across the country. 
They are also in the Leahy homes.
  Over the past 40 years, due to its beautiful craftsmanship and joyful 
products, Maple Landmark has been able to expand its sales operation to 
toy stores and distributors throughout the United States and abroad. 
All the while, it has maintained all manufacturing and sourcing 
operations in Vermont, at their facility in Middlebury. Mike and his 
team's devotion to their craft has allowed for the development of a 
strong homegrown business in Vermont that has helped to show the world 
all that our State has to offer.
  In March 2020, as much of the world shut down and many families and 
children began learning, working, and spending more time at home, the 
popularity of Maple Landmark's toys and games exploded. Facing an 
unprecedented increase in orders from across the United States, Maple 
Landmark has been firing on all cylinders. This past holiday season was 
its busiest yet.
  Unfortunately, Landmark Maple has not been immune to the labor 
shortages that continue to strain businesses nationwide. While labor 
shortages are nothing new for many businesses across rural communities 
in Vermont, those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have been 
particularly challenging. The inability to find a sustainable workforce 
coupled with the greater effort necessary to recruit and train new 
workers has made it more difficult for Landmark Maple to take advantage 
of rising demand that would otherwise be a boon for the business.
  The story of Landmark Maple is far from unique, and it reaffirms that 
we need to do all we can to control the pandemic, vaccinate the 
population, and fully restore the economy. Everyone who can get 
vaccinated must get vaccinated. Everyone who is eligible for a booster 
shot, must get their booster shot. If we make these responsible choices 
and continue to prioritize the collective health and safety of our 
families and communities, more Americans will be willing and able to 
enter, reenter, and remain in the workforce. In doing so, we will be 
able to ensure that businesses like Maple Landmark Woodcraft can 
continue to operate and contribute to their communities for years to 
come.
  Maple Landmark was profiled in a November 10, 2021, article published 
in the Washington Post. I ask unanimous consent that the article 
titled, ``Ho, ho, no: For maker of wooden toys, the struggle ahead of 
Christmas is not finding supplies, but finding workers'' be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Nov. 10, 2021]

 Ho, Ho, No; For Maker of Wooden Toys, the Struggle Ahead of Christmas 
              Is Not Finding Supplies, But Finding Workers

                           (By Jeanne Whalen)

       With eight weeks to go until Christmas, tensions were 
     running high at one of Vermont's oldest toymakers. As hammers 
     fell on hardwood and machine tools cut train engines, 
     managers gathered around a table to confront a daunting list 
     of unfilled orders.
       ``We need 32 sets of chess pieces. I don't have 32 sets,'' 
     assembly supervisor Anne Cummings told half a dozen 
     colleagues, sparking a quick discussion of when the items 
     might appear.
       ``Umm, hobby horses? We'll want at least three to get 
     finished by tomorrow at the latest,'' process engineer Adam 
     Rainville told the workshop foreman.
       Unlike much of the toy industry, Maple Landmark isn't 
     suffering from a lack of imported materials as global supply 
     lines buckle. The maker of wooden toys gets nearly all its 
     lumber from nearby mills and has little trouble buying 
     lacquer, paint and sandpaper from its Vermont suppliers.
       As it fields an unprecedented crush of orders, the main 
     factor holding it back is a shortage of workers.
       ``We're just really, really busy and hiring workforce is a 
     challenge,'' said Mike Rainville, who founded the business 40 
     years ago. ``We could use more in assembly. We can use more 
     in the shop. I mean, really, any production position we can 
     probably use help in.
       Rainville has been trying for weeks to hire three or four 
     workers to add to his crew of 46, but competition is fierce. 
     The cheese factory up the road has eight open positions. The 
     cidery next door and the teddy bear factory on Route 7 have 
     large ``Help Wanted'' signs outside. Maple Landmark has 
     raised its average wage rate by more than 7 percent over the 
     last year, Rainville said--the average production worker 
     earns over $15 an hour--but some local companies with deeper 
     pockets are offering signing bonuses, a perk Rainville said 
     he can't afford to match.
       With an unemployment rate of only 2.9 percent, Vermont is 
     an extreme example of a problem plaguing employers across the 
     country. In some regions, a shortage of workers is more 
     challenging to Christmas preparations than the global 
     scarcity of semiconductors or the cargo deluge overwhelming 
     ports.
       A nationwide shopping spree is exacerbating the strain on 
     companies like Maple Landmark. Flush with cash from nearly 
     two years of forgoing restaurant meals and travel, Americans 
     are bingeing on products--electronics, clothes, gifts and 
     anything else they can click into an online shopping cart.
       In September, household spending on goods was 14 percent 
     higher than it was as the pandemic was beginning in February 
     2020, according to David Wilcox, an economist with the 
     Peterson Institute for International Economics. If normal 
     pre-pandemic trends had continued, demand for goods would be 
     only 5 percent higher now, he said.
       Maple Landmark felt the surge as soon as it began. In early 
     2020, Rainville was grumbling to his staff about the surplus 
     of Chinese checkers sets gathering dust in inventory. But by 
     April and May, as Americans were trapped indoors under 
     lockdown, ``we sold hundreds of them,'' he said.
       A rush of online orders last year nearly made up for the 
     collapse in Maple Landmark's sales to shuttered retailers. 
     Now, with many shops having reopened, ``we're getting hit 
     from all sides,'' Rainville said. ``Every week we are falling 
     further behind our incoming orders.''
       Recently, the company stopped taking Christmas orders from 
     new retailers so it could focus on its existing retail 
     clients.
       Maple Landmark has searched for workers the conventional 
     way--with posts on the employment website Indeed.com--and the 
     quirky Vermont way, with a sign near its kindling pile behind 
     the shop.
       The company leaves wood scraps there for anyone to take. 
     This summer, Rainville tacked a piece of paper to the shed: 
     ``Help Wanted. Employees get dibs on scrap wood! Apply 
     inside.''
       That brought in a few candidates, leading to one hire. But 
     other interviews led nowhere, perhaps because workers have so 
     many choices, Rainville said.
       ``People come in thinking that, gosh, making toys, that 
     sounds like fun,'' he said. ``Once they take a tour through 
     the shop or something, they say, `Okay, this is work.' And 
     then, maybe if we had interest, we'd call them in for a 
     second interview and they don't respond.''
       It's also hard to find people good at working with their 
     hands, Rainville said, a phenomenon he attributes to the 
     decline in farming life, which taught people to fix and build 
     things.
       Vermont demographics--an aging population and a shrinking 
     workforce--were already working against employers before the 
     pandemic. With the new consumption surge, competition for 
     workers has become extreme.
       A few months ago, Rainville found himself vying with the 
     local school bus company for one employee.
       ``We almost came close to getting her on full-time in the 
     summer, and then the bus company called her up and said, `We 
     need you in the fall and we're going to pay you anything to 
     have you.' ''
       Signs of the problem are everywhere. In nearby Burlington, 
     several long shelves at a CVS Pharmacy were bare, including 
     large sections missing school supplies and ibuprofen. An 
     employee said the pharmacy couldn't find enough workers to 
     stock the shelves, while a sign on the door said the store 
     was trimming its opening hours due to staffing shortages.
       Shopping at the CVS was Devlin Cahill-Garcia, a 20-year-old 
     community college student who earns $13 an hour working at a 
     shop on the other side of town. ``I do have a job at the 
     moment, but I'm trying to find a better one, which is easier 
     than ever now,'' he said.
       When covid hit, some of Cahill-Garcia's friends at the 
     University of Vermont quit their part-time jobs in 
     Burlington. Many haven't returned, possibly because their 
     parents can support them, he said. ``After being unemployed 
     so long, I don't think a lot of people want to go back to 
     work,'' he said
       Down the road, Lake Champlain Chocolates has asked its 
     administrative staff, including marketing director Allyson 
     Myers, to take shifts in the factory to keep up with holiday 
     demand that is 20 percent higher than in 2019.
       ``This has been a kind of organization-wide call of, `Okay, 
     administrative team, we need you to step up and help us 
     because we are

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     short,' '' said Myers, who has pitched in bagging Hanukkah 
     gelt and peppermint patties.
       The family-owned company also held its first job fair this 
     month to try to fill about 20 openings and has raised its 
     manufacturing starting wage by about 10 percent since last 
     year, said Myers, who called the labor shortage a bigger 
     problem than supply-chain issues.
       Matt Parker, head of sales at Danforth Pewter, a workshop 
     and retail business that sells ornaments and home decor, 
     agreed with that assessment. The company has had no trouble 
     getting pewter from its Rhode Island supplier but has 
     struggled to fill about eight openings in production, 
     customer service and retail, Parker said.
       The company has raised wages this year--by 5 to 10 percent, 
     he estimated--and is offering bonuses to new and existing 
     employees. Parker said he doesn't know why it has been so 
     hard to hire, but guessed that the pandemic ``obviously threw 
     a lot of people off entering the workforce'' and made them 
     worry about getting infected.
       At Maple Landmark, soaring demand and a lack of workers 
     this summer stripped the company of its inventory, leaving it 
     with little to fill the holiday rush. As a result, the 
     woodworkers are making things to order as purchases roll in.
       One of the company's biggest sellers is the ``name 
     train''--a chain of brightly colored letters on wheels that 
     spell a child's name, between an engine and a caboose. 
     Letters are everywhere in the workshop--an automated machine 
     cutting a tray of O's, a worker putting wheels on a carton of 
     red H's.
       At the morning meeting, Cummings raised an urgent problem: 
     They had run out of the letter E.
       ``Yellow E,'' clarified Rainville's mother, Pat Rainville, 
     who works in production. The customer has specifically 
     requested that color for that letter, so more would have to 
     be made.
       At her station downstairs, Pat Rainville motioned toward a 
     wall of shelves that should have been stuffed with boxes 
     holding every letter in a variety of hues. But many of the 
     shelves were empty.
       Things got so bad over one recent weekend that even the 
     letter Q was in short supply, Mike Rainville said. ``We know 
     we're low when even Q's run out.''

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