Bad News at Harlow Foods

The press conference at Harlow Foods was supposed to last twenty minutes, but it lasted nearly two hours. The managing director, Helen Bryant, began by announcing that the company would close one of its three factories by the end of the year. She apologised for the short notice and promised that nobody would lose their job without a fair offer.

A reporter from the local radio asked whether the board had made the decision before the summer. Bryant admitted that the board had started discussing the plan in June, but she said she had not hidden anything from the workers. “We were wrong to wait so long before telling them,” she added.

Another journalist asked how many families would be affected. Bryant answered that about two hundred people worked at the plant and that the company would offer transfers to the two other sites. When a journalist asked why the company had chosen the Marsh Road factory, she explained that it was the oldest and the most expensive to maintain.

The union representative, Mark Doyle, stood up and said that the management had ignored the workers’ warnings. He asked the board to think again and suggested postponing the closure until a joint study was finished. Bryant refused to give a date, but she agreed to meet the union the following week.

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