More than 100 employees will be laid off at a Smithfield Foods Inc. distribution center in Clayton, North Carolina, as the company plans to permanently close the facility at the end of October.
This is the first mass layoff reported in 2018 for Johnston County.
According to a notice sent by Smithfield Fresh Meats Corp. to the N.C. Department of Commerce, the first wave of layoffs will come Oct. 7, nearly a month away.
Approximately 18 warehouse operators will lose their jobs at the Smithfield distribution center that day.
An additional 83 Smithfield employees will be laid off Oct. 21. That wave of layoffs will affect positions ranging from billing clerks to shift operations managers to warehouse supervisors.
Following those layoffs, one individual will remain actively employed at the facility. That individual, a refrigerator mechanic, will be laid off Oct. 31.
Smithfield notified the Department of Commerce of the upcoming layoffs in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give a 60-day public notice of mass layoffs.
The department received Smithfield’s WARN notice Aug. 31., meaning that the first two waves of layoffs planned by the company fall before the 60-day public notice requirement.
The company stated in its notice that “all laid off employees will receive their normal hourly wages/salary and benefits” through Oct. 31.
“We regret the circumstances that made this layoff necessary,” senior director of human resources Katrina Ryder said in the WARN notice.
Early last month, a federal jury decided that Smithfield owed $473.5 million to neighbors of its three industrial-scale hog farms in Pender County, North Carolina. The decision was based on a lawsuit submitted by six neighbors over nuisances related to odors, flies and rumbling trucks.
Smithfield was not available for comment on the reasoning for the Clayton distribution center’s closing, or if it related to the recent lawsuit in any way.
North Carolina has seen 8,666 employees laid off through WARN notices in 2018. North Carolina’s 2018 WARN summary can be found here.
