When it comes to paper, the odds are that you don’t give much of a thought to where it comes from. You see a logo on the package, but when you put it in the printer and get down to business, you probably don’t think much about the name that was on the wrapping. But that ream of paper, and the company who makes it represent an industry that employs 1,000s of people in order to meet your basic needs.

Sadly, the number of people employed in the field is going to go down in the very near future. The management of International Paper has announced that they are going to be closing their facility in Kalamazoo and they will be laying off 77 people in the process. This job closing will be enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. 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, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on 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.” To that end the cuts will only be happening in the middle of September, and that means the workers will be given some, if not a lot, of time to find new positions or acclimate to the idea of being without a job.

This is not, as you may have guessed, the first time that International Paper has turned to layoffs in order to make ends meet in its budget. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of cuts made by the company here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “International Paper Co. is the largest paper and pulp company in America, and possibly in the world as well. According to estimates the company, which is based in Memphis, has about 59,500 employees worldwide. Or at least they used to. The company has informed the state that they are letting go of 87 employees , and while it may not be a lot when compared to the overall numbers for the company it is still a loss to the local economy. … This information comes to us from an official notice posted by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, owing to the fact that the layoff were from the 620 S. Belmont Ave facility in Indiana. This facility is also known as Shorewood Packaging. The memo was created by International Paper Co. and it did reveal some other interesting details about the layoffs.”