Hood jobs melt away

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.journalinquirer.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18790131&BRD=985&PAG=461&dept_id=569433&rfi=6

By:Howard French, Journal Inquirer
09/06/2007

It's deja vu all over again for workers at HP Hood's Suffield ice cream plant, where company officials announced Wednesday that Hood will lay off 80 of the 160 hourly employees there, according to Brian Petronella, president of Local 371 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Just three years ago Suffield workers faced a similar threat of layoffs and even the closing of the plant, which was headed off at the last moment when the company changed plans.

The union's three-year contract also expires Oct. 1, Petronella said, adding he is hopeful the union at least can negotiate a generous severance package for those who are laid off, and can limit the layoffs to recent hires, rather than longtime employees.

"They're good jobs," he said of the Suffield plant positions. "We hope this doesn't fall on our most senior people," Petronella said.

Company officials Wednesday told the union that the production of novelty ice cream items would be transferred to a plant in New York, leaving only about 80 workers at the Suffield plant - which less than three years ago was the subject of a state effort to provide assistance to expand.

The state in 2005 announced that it would grant Hood a $2 million, 2 percent interest loan. At the time of the loan announcement, Gov. M. Jodi Rell said that if the company created 85 full-time jobs by Oct. 31, 2005 - and retained a total of 226 full-time jobs for a minimum of two years - $500,000 of the state's $2 million loan would be forgiven.

FULL story at link.