The Press Conference

The press conference at Harlow Foods was supposed to last twenty minutes. Instead, it lasted nearly two hours. The managing director, Helen Brandt, began by saying that the company would close one of its three factories by the end of the year. She said she was sorry about the short notice, and she promised that nobody would lose a job without a fair offer.

A reporter from the local radio asked if the decision had been made before the summer. Brandt said that the board had talked about the plan since June, but she said she had not hidden anything from the workers. “We should have told them earlier,” she said.

Another journalist asked how many families the closure would touch. Brandt answered that about two hundred people worked at the plant and that the company would offer jobs at the two other sites. When she was asked why Marsh Road had been chosen, she said it was the oldest and the most expensive to keep open.

The union representative, Mark Doyle, stood up. He said that the management did not listen to the workers’ warnings. He asked the board to wait and to do a joint study first. Brandt did not give a date, but she agreed to meet the union the following week.

Before leaving, she asked the journalists not to expect more news that week and to respect the privacy of the employees. Outside, workers were waiting in silence. One of them said that he had worked there for twenty-two years and that he did not know what to tell his children.