Two Food Processors Close; Employees turn to BCNH

When the layoff news hit, the workers’ first calls were to Vijay Bhujel, deputy director at BCNH.  On Friday afternoon, August 16, it was Rustic Crust in Pittsfield, with 77 employees, most of them New Americans. They learned that their jobs were gone effective immediately.

The photo, copied here unedited from the “Our Story” page of the Rustic Crust website, shows a workforce from Bhutan, Indonesia, and parts of Africa. (The Rustic Crust company is now known as Ever Better Eating.)

Less than a week later, on August 22 it was Blake’s All Natural in Concord, with 30 employees, most of them New Americans.  Their workers got letters explaining that the plant would close a week later, on August 30.  The letter offered two weeks’ pay as a cash bonus for anyone who worked through the 30th.  (The Silk Farm Road operation is now officially known as Feed the Future LLC.)

Neither employer had alerted the relevant state officials about the layoffs.  BCNH did.  We broke the news to the man who manages the state’s “Rapid Response Team” that kicks in to help workers after their jobs disappear, and to the deputy commissioner at the Department of Employment Security, and to the man at the Department of Health and Human Services who attends to employment programs that help refugees in New Hampshire find work. 

The state teams are moving quickly to help the workers file for unemployment benefits, but the routine is harder than usual in these two cases because so many of the workers don’t speak English and have no experience in this kind of situation.   

Vijay, the man the workers turned to first and a leader in the Bhutanese community, organized a group session for the displaced Nepali speakers at the Employment Security office in Concord on August 22.  He helped them sign up for their unemployment benefits.  Meanwhile, other members of the BCNH staff were calling regional employers to start the process of getting all the workers back among the employed.

Employers with openings should email rminard@bcinnh.org and we will get the information out to potential recruits. 

The region’s job market isn’t quite as robust as it was a year ago, but we know how highly valued the state’s New Americans are as employees.  We’re optimistic that the layoffs, as painful as they are, will be short-lived and lead to better jobs nearby.