Hess is a name that many of us know well, at least if the stations are in the local area, but you may not know the depths of the company, and how many people they actually employ outside of their service stations.

Oh wait, we’re not talking about that Hess Company. We are talking about a different company with a very similar name, Hess Tool and Die. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how Hess Tool and Die describes itself, “A QS-9000 certified company established in 1975, Hess Tool & Die is a high quality and very competitive provider of both long and short run stampings — metal tubes, spacers, and sleeves. The Hess family has a solid reputation for attention to detail and customer satisfaction.”

Apparently the company believes it can complete that mission of customer satisfaction without 200 of its workers. The workers were called into a morning meeting and told that the money to pay them was simply not there. Then they were let go because of that reason. This job loss impacted primarily Tool and Die workers for the company. To that end the company allowed workers who were let to go home and get trailers or other methods of bringing home the sizable tools that they used to do their jobs.

These job cuts are more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “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.” Usually under the terms of a mass layoff action workers are given more time to prepare for their job losses, so the company may face some scrutiny for not properly giving advance WARN notices to its workers.

The company has been showing some serious signs of fiscal distress currently. Earlier in the same day that the layoffs were made the company had a warrant put up on its door. That warrant informed the management of the company that they had 36 hours to pay the back taxes that it owed, or the township would begin to seize the assets of the company in order to make up for the debts. The company did, at that time, owe tax money to Cass County, Milton Township and interestingly enough the Edwardsburg School District. The amount of the back taxes owed was just shy of $15,000. The company was able to pay the back taxes. The lump payment of those taxes is however the most likely reason for the immediacy of the layoffs taken by the company, though at the time that cannot be confirmed by this reporter.