West Liberty Foods plans to furlough workers

Citing a decline in demand for its products as restaurant sales have dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, West Liberty Foods will make adjustments to its operations that will eventually lead to the furlough of around 300 employees.

Roy Graber Headshot
(Courtesy Iowa Turkey Federation)
(Courtesy Iowa Turkey Federation)

Citing a decline in demand for its products as restaurant sales have dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, West Liberty Foods will make adjustments to its operations that will eventually lead to the furlough of around 300 employees.

According to an email from Dan Waters, vice president and general counsel for West Liberty Foods, the company has accumulated millions of excess pounds of turkey breast meat in cold storage because of reduced restaurant dining during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To help West Liberty Foods “work through that inventory” of turkey meat in cold storage, Waters said the company will for the time being, process the live turkeys at its affiliated growers’ farms. However, effective around June 22, the growers will quit placing poults for an 18-week period.

“That means that we will not have live turkeys to process during a period running from about November through February, allowing us to work through that inventory of excess meat,” Waters explained. “During that time, team members who work in evisceration, cut-up, and raw pack at our West Liberty (Iowa) facility, would be placed on temporary furlough.”

Waters did not have exact figures on how many people would be furloughed, but the company estimated it would be around 300 people. The remainder of the employees at the plant will continue to fabricate, cook and slice products from the meat in West Liberty Foods’ inventory.

Furloughed workers will receive unemployment benefits, and the company will pay those workers an additional 25% to supplement those benefits and pay the premiums for them to remain on the company’s health insurance plan during the duration of the furlough.

Waters added that if the turkey industry recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic faster than expected, the furloughs may be concluded in less than 18 weeks.

West Liberty Foods, according to the WATTAgNet Top Poultry Companies Database, was formed in 1997 when 47 Iowa turkey growers formed the Iowa Turkey Growers Cooperative and it purchased a former Louis Rich facility in West Liberty. The company specializes in slicing and co-packing of cooked red meat and poultry products. West Liberty Foods ranks 12 among U.S. turkey producers, and slaughtered 217.9 million pounds of live turkeys in 2019.

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