Joe Tarr
Oscar Mayer announced on Wednesday that it will close its Madison plant over the next two years, eliminating 1,000 jobs from the city.
In an afternoon news conference, city, county and state officials all mourned the loss of a Madison institution and lamented the effects it would have on employees and their families. But they also offered hope and encouragement to those workers.
“The positive news from all this...is we are not in the depths of recession right now,” said Dane County Executive Joe Parisi. “We’re in a period of economic growth, we’re in a period where we have employers looking for hard-working, skilled employees just like those at Oscar Mayer.”
“Our message to the workers is you’re not alone,” Parisi added. “We’re here to support you.”
Others echoed that theme, including Pat Schramm, executive director of the Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin, whose agency will offer assistance to laid-off workers.
“There’s never been a better time in this community for this to happen because all the relationships are in place to make the transition for the workers as quickly as possible,” Schramm said. “All the people who can make a difference in helping people move into new jobs are in place, and those relationships are very solid.”
Oscar Mayer first opened in Madison in 1919 and the city has been the company’s headquarters since 1957. At its peak in the 1970s, the plant employed about 4,000 workers. But a merger this year of its parent company, Kraft, with H.J. Heinz Co., spurred rumors that Oscar’s days in Madison were numbered.
In a letter to Mayor Paul Soglin Wednesday, the company’s Abigail Blunt wrote that a reorganization of the two food giants led to the plant’s closing. “In 2016, Kraft Heinz will move Oscar Mayer and our U.S. Meats Business Unit from Madison, Wisconsin, to our new co-headquarters in downtown Chicago at the Aon Center. This move centralizes all our U.S. Business Units to our co-headquarters of Chicago and Pittsburgh, which will drive increased collaboration and efficiency.”
Although the company is leaving Madison, Soglin said the brand will endure, with production shifted to other facilities.
“The impact on Madison and metro area has got to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Soglin said. “We don’t know the number, but when you take the payroll, the production, packaging materials and all that goes into the operation at Oscar Mayer, which has been going on for over a hundred years, and then extend that to the dry cleaners, the retailers, the supermarkets, the neighborhood groceries, the local dining spots, kids sporting activities, it is very significant.”
Schramm said that her agency will put together a rapid response team, which will survey all employees at the factory in order to understand their skills and education and help them find new work. She said that federal funds will be available to help the workers.
The mayor said it is too early to know how the closure might affect the city’s budget or how the city might be involved in redeveloping the property.
Ald. Rebecca Kemble represents a district north of the company, and many of its employees live in her district. She said she didn’t think there was anything the city could have done to keep Oscar Mayer here.
“We’re losing jobs not because the company is losing market, not because there’s an economic downturn, but because investors made a decision based on the profit of their shareholders, and it’s the workers in our community that are suffering,” Kemble said.
She said the closing underscores the need to focus on developing locally owned, sustainable business ventures. She said there’s been a trend of transforming closed plants into worker-owned operations, and she is hopeful something like that could happen with the Oscar Mayer plant, perhaps helping to grow the regional food industry.
“That’s a possibility that would help workers keep jobs but build equity and ownership in a facility,” she said.
