The workers are charging the company with shutting its factory without giving them the legally mandated 60-day advance notice. AMPAC claims it couldn’t have “reasonably” foreseen the plant shutdown, in order to get around the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act), which requires companies to give 60 days advance notice to its employees of a plant closing or pay them back wages and benefits for these 60 days.

The company abruptly closed its facilities without notice to its 350 employees on Nov. 16, 2001. Leading up to the shutdown, AMPAC bosses began farming work out from the Chicago plant, which was organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), to its nonunion plants. Following the shutdown the company told the union workers they could start as “new hires” at their nonunion plant in Des Moines. The workers filed suit against the meatpacking company five months later, arguing that it had violated the WARN Act. They are demanding two months’ severance pay, an extension of medical benefits, unpaid vacation pay, and two half-days pay still owed them by the company.

At the January 23 hearing on case, the company lawyer said the 60-day notice should be waived because the expense of establishing sanitary production facilities was “unforeseeable.” The AMPAC bosses claim they couldn’t comply with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations because they didn’t expect the government agency would call for the building of a new cooler, which would cost $3 million. And we “still wouldn’t know if they will be satisfied,” said AMPAC’s attorney. “It was not foreseeable that the plant would close.”

The WARN Act states that the notice period can be reduced or eliminated if “business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable as of the time that notice would have been required.”

Jorge Sanchez, the lawyer defending those plaintiffs who were members of the UFCW, explained that the USDA had issued many orders to the company over a period of two years and finally ordered it to fix the problems. “The USDA said that you wouldn’t be able to operate until you fix them. The company had plenty of time to prevent the unsanitary conditions, and to go by the USDA regulations,” he said. Not following the regulations meant that the plant would have to be shut down.

AMPAC slaughtered, butchered, and packed between 3,000 and 3,400 hogs per day. In the months preceding the shutdown, the USDA had issued several noncompliance notices to the company. It cited the company for water dripping onto the product, the presence of grease and oil on hams, rust, hog carcasses on the floor, flaking paint, rodent droppings, and the presence of meat with open abscesses on cutting tables.

Rufino Peña, one of the plaintiffs in the case, worked at the company for 27 years as a butcher. Whether the workers win or not in court, he said, “it would have been worth it because so many companies abuse people. It is worth it if other people learn from this.”

Another 15 to 20 sanitation workers who were not included under the UFCW contract with AMPAC are planning to file a similar suit against the company as well.

Rollande Girard is a garment worker in Chicago.  
 
 
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