Roth approached his role as company chaplain as that of a "caregiver," devoting most of his time to things like making hospital visits to sick employees. "When people have a crisis, they have someone to call," says Roth. On occasion he would try to speak to employees about Jesus, he adds, but only when they seemed receptive -- and only after asking if it would be OK. "Everything I do is with permission," he says. "If they ask questions, I'll say, 'Can I tell you what the Bible says about it?"
Page is well aware that civil-liberties advocates might look askance at some of the company's evangelizing. And, in fact, Lewis Maltby, who heads the National Workrights Institute, in Princeton, N.J., says he sees real problems. "It's hard to say no to the prayer breakfast when it's the boss that's inviting you," says Maltby. "It's subtle coercion -- perhaps unintended coercion, but coercion nonetheless."
In interviews for this story, non-Christian employees -- even those speaking off the record -- reported feeling no undue pressure to join in the company's prayer sessions. Yet there are definitely times, they say, when they do feel uncomfortable. "When they say prayers, most people will have their heads down," says Jonathan Roberts, a former press-break operator at the company. "[I'd] just sit there with everybody and look around."
Likewise, former Accu-Fab engineer Tom O'Connor says that when he first started, he felt a little awkward when other employees and managers would ask him if he wanted to sign up for Monday-night Bible-study classes. "At first I used to give excuses, but I let it be known that I just wasn't interested," he says.
KEEPING THE FAITH: Plant manager Jim Nance struggled with the idea of a Christian company undergoing layoffs.
Page and Zullig insist they're really not trying to push their faith on uninterested employees. Or, as Page puts it, "nobody here is beating anybody over the head with Bibles." At the same time, they believe that they have a duty to put the Christian message out there. They're proud that since early 2000 at least 18 Accu-Fab workers have been born again -- including one worker who accepted Christ in the company lunchroom -- and they openly admit they'd like more employees to do the same. "Our hope would be for everybody in the company to accept Christ," says Zullig.
They also wouldn't mind winning over some customers. As part of the company's revamped PowerPoint sales pitch, Page typically spends several minutes discussing the company's Christ-centered focus. And in December 2000 and 2001 he sent customers and vendors inspirational Christian books, such as The Word on Management and the best-selling The Prayer of Jabez, along with a Christmas letter that asked: "Has He been asking you to commit to a new or closer relationship with Him? All you have to do is speak the word 'yes' to begin to receive the comfort only He can provide."
Page says several customers (all of whom were Christian) thanked him for the letter. In some instances, though, Accu-Fab's evangelizing has definitely fallen flat. One customer who did not want to be identified says that after one of Page's sales pitches, two or three employees complained. "Some people were kind of taken aback," says the buyer, who recalls that Page spent the first five minutes talking about Accu-Fab's mission statement. "They thought it was out of place." The buyer, however, has continued doing business with Accu-Fab.
Similarly, after sending out his 2001 Christmas letter, Page got a voice-mail message from a Jewish buyer who asked to be taken off the mailing list. But Page says he's not aware of any instance where Accu-Fab's evangelizing has cost it business -- at least not yet. "The Scripture says we will be put on trial for our beliefs," he says. "That's a price we'll pay."
That's not our problem
Accu-Fab could afford to pay that price in 2000, just as it could afford the $11,000 a year it was spending on a company chaplain and the thousands of dollars that were going toward tithing and profit sharing and mailing out inspirational books. At the time, the company was doing nearly $1 million a month in business. "We were feeling pretty good -- we thought we were doing everything right," says Zullig. "We were just cruising and trying to keep up with demand."
That, though, was before the telecom market crashed. The first signs of trouble came in early 2001, when high-tech customers began scaling back orders. Then, in April, the big blow came. Page got word that the company's largest customer -- the southeastern telecom company Alcatel -- was cutting off all Accu-Fab business. All told, the company was looking at close to a 50% drop in revenue, and Page wasn't sure that nearly $200,000 in bills for pending Alcatel deliveries would ever get paid. Or whether, in the meantime, Accu-Fab would be able to keep meeting payroll and making its loan payments. "There were some scenarios," he says, "that could have killed us."
Back when they drafted their new mission statement, Page and Zullig hadn't imagined any circumstance that would force them to put dozens of people out of work. Suddenly, that's what they were facing. The two men spent long periods in Page's office talking and praying over the situation. "We were looking at sales forecasts and a backlog of orders we couldn't ship," says Page. "There were certain realities we had to face." Those realities kept pointing to layoffs, however, a move that they didn't think a Christian company ought to make. "It goes back to accountability. If you're truly holding yourselves accountable [to employees], you can't make a decision like that," says Page. Adds Zullig: "I kept feeling like we were failing people. The thought kept going through my mind that we were letting people down."
In the end, they laid off 18 full-time staffers, as well as 20 workers from a local handicapped-employees program. "I remember us going through that [layoff] list at least a dozen different times," says Zullig. "But the reality was, we had lost a lot of money, and we had to do something."
The damage might have been worse. According to Zullig, he and Page deliberated over whether they ought to make deeper cuts but opted instead to scale the remaining production workers back to a 32-hour workweek. The company was hoping it would need those workers when new orders came in, but Zullig insists that the bigger motivation was saving jobs. "We didn't just wield the ax and slash to the bone," he says. "If our goal in life was to make money, we would have cut a lot deeper."
