Pilgrim’s Pride Begins A Mass Layoff Action

Have you ever heard of the name Pilgrim’s Pride? They don’t make square topped hats, buckled shoes or even an overly strict sense of morality. Maybe you know them by their other name Pilgrim Corp. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they describes itself, “·Pilgrim’s is the second-largest chicken producer in the world, with operations in the United States, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Our corporate headquarters is in Greeley, Colorado. We employ approximately 38,500 people and have the capacity to process more than 36 million birds per week for a total of more than 9.5 billion pounds of live chicken annually. Pilgrim’s is ranked among the largest U.S. corporations, with net sales totaling $7.5 billion in fiscal 2011.” Well it looks like the company is going to be getting rid of a significant number of workers in order to make ends meet.

The company is getting ready to get rid of about 400 workers at its Hamilton County processing facility in the upcoming month.  Since so many people are going to be put out of a job in the layoffs this is 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 describes a mass layoff action, “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.” A mass layoff action has its own specific rules, designed to allow workers to get ready for their impending job losses and allow the community time to cope.

The workers who will be cut back with be put out of a job by the 15^th of June. Which does give them some time to prepare, but in the current long term economic downturn is likely not enough time to find new work, at least not for the majority of the workers. The current plants in the area employ about 1,500 workers, so these cuts will represent more than one quarter of all of the workers in the area being cut at once. Those job losses can ripple to the surrounding community and may actually result in a loss of more jobs on the whole in the community.

The company has already said that it has not planned to cut back on the processing of chicken with the job cuts. The company will also not be cutting back on any of its orders. Hopefully, this will mean that the layoffs will have as small of an impact as possible on the surrounding community as possible.  This is not the first time that the company has announced layoffs in the recent past. They also recently cut back on about 85 workers last week.