Help For Those Losing Their Job

Losing a job can be a difficult transition for anyone, especially when it's a bulk of the community. But with your town rallying for you and stepping up to help, it can make the transition a little bit easier. 

Residents of Orange City, Iowa, learned this week that the city's largest manufacturing plant will close its doors for good leaving many without the security of a job they once knew.

AdvancePierre Foods will close its doors sometime in November, leaving more than 300 people of Sioux County, Iowa, without a job.

"You think of the 305 people that it's affecting and are losing employment that has to be your first concern and you have to be considering how can we get those people re-employed in the region," Orange City Mayor Les Douma said.

While it came as a shock to employees and residents of Orange City, it's something AdvancePierre Foods has been looking at for quite some time now.

"Over the last five or six months we have been studying our manufacturing facilities.  And we came to the conclusion that over the eleven facilities we had some duplicate efforts and some excess capacity." Senior Vice President of Human Resources Paul Telenson said. 

That led to the closing of this plant. Now the Mayor of Orange City has vowed to rally for those impacted with the help of an unlikely source.

"I think people will aggressively sell themselves and market themselves and we need to help them do that.  So AdvancePierre Foods has committed to helping them do that as well to transition themselves to another work force and another job," Douma said.

With the help of the city, AdvancePierre Food will set up interviews, look within its other companies, and help workers get their resumes and interview skills ready.

The Mayor believes there is light in what many consider a dark situation.

"The thing that we have on our side now is time; we have until the month of November. That was the commitment by AdvancePierre Foods that they would be open until mid November to the end of the year so people know that we know the timeline.  So now we have to be aggressive and supportive of all the people involved and do what we can do to make this a positive thing," Douma said.

The city along with the help of AdvancePierre Foods plan to sell the building, which, in turn, could bring more jobs to Orange City at some point. As of right now, they're still in the planning process for that.