The management of Kraft foods has announced that they are going to be closing one of their manufacturing facilities. The facility, which is located in the city of Waupaca, Wisconsin, currently employs 200 workers. When the plant closes most of them are going to be put out of a job. The closure of this facility will mean that 120 of the 200 workers, or more than fifty percent of those currently employed, will be looking for work after the closure.

The workers were notified of the closure of the facility on Tuesday of this week, so the impacted workers already have and idea of who is going to be getting the boot and who is going to be staying on with the skeleton crew of remaining workers. On the bright side the company is giving the workers plenty of advance notice. The facility itself will not close until the second quarter of 2013, so the workers will have ample time to search for a new job. This period of notice is far more than a mass layoff action would generally require of the company. So who knows, the majority of the workers may actually be able to find new positions before the facility closes and they would go onto the unemployment rolls. A lucky few may even be able to stay with the same company. A nearby facility is looking to hire on 20 workers, and those laid off by this action are being given preferential treatment for the hiring for those jobs.

This is not the first that that we have talked about job closings at Kraft this year. Some of you may recall coverage from late January of this year detailing the loss of more than 1,500 jobs by the company at three different locations. For those of you who did not catch it the first time around here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “Kraft Foods recently made an announcement that they are going to layoff about 1,600 workers from their North American operations. The layoffs are part of a plan by the corporate management to split the company into two different companies…About 40% of the cuts to the staffing will come from the sales staff in the US and the corporate office. While we do not know the exact date of the layoffs we know that come of the cuts will come to fruition in the next 12 months, as the reorganization comes in to full swing…As part of the changes the company will close facilities in Tarrytown N.Y., East Hanover, N.J., and Glenview, Ill, and move those operating to the Chicago area in the next couple of months. The company will, for the time being, keep its office space in Canada.” So as you can see these 120 layoffs announced this week are in addition to these massive layoffs, brining the total of layoffs for Kraft this year to about 1720, so far. Not exactly an encouraging sign for the remaining workers when you consider that it is only June right now.