Some of you may recall our earlier coverage of the planned temporary layoffs of workers at a Hasbro plant. But for those of you who do not recall here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all:

“Many of you, no doubt, know the name Hasbro. You may think of them fondly as the makers of one of your favorite childhood toys. That is, unless you work for them. At least 170 workers are not thinking of the game maker in a favorable light right now, as they have just been let go by the management of the Hasbro Company.

These cuts are enough to qualify as a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the term mass layoff action it is defined as the following:

“…mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days. ”

The company is blaming the layoffs of disappointing sales in the 2011 year in the US as the reason for these job cuts, though the company is not citing and specific sales numbers, or product lines, that are behind the problems. However looking at the company’s reports on their finance the company reported a recorded a revenue of $4.29 billion, which is actually an increase when it is compared to the profits that the company posted in 2010. That year the company only posted a profit of about $4 billion. For those of you paying close attention, yes that is about a 7% increase over the last year.

These numbers would lead one to believe that the company’s sales have actually increased over the last year. So how can the company justify laying off US workers? Well apparently, most of their growth is coming from foreign markets. The US and Canada markets showed a decrease of about $2.2.5 million, and that is why the layoffs are coming primarily to the workers in the US.”

Well it looks like the temporary just got dropped off of those layoffs as the workers were notified that the date they would be coming back to work was never. In a statement made to a reporter for Mass Live the company said the following about the plant operations, “Hasbro expects this facility will continue to operate at this level of employment, which means that we will not be recalling certain employees who have been out on temporary layoff.” That is one of the coldest ways to let more than 100 people know that they will now be back on the open job market. Then again, since they were already on temporary layoff the odds are good that they have already begun to look for new positions.