Posted on 06/14/2021 6:47:04 AM PDT by grundle
Workers at No Evil Foods’ North Carolina plant were furious at the news, according to audio of the layoff announcement.
A self-described socially conscious vegan food manufacturer laid off its entire production staff in North Carolina on Friday, infuriating workers who said the lack of notice and severance pay was out of step with the company’s stated values.
Audio of the layoff announcement at No Evil Foods provided to HuffPost by a source captured stunned workers shouting back at company leaders who delivered the news.
“So we get fired so you can stay alive?” one worker said to the company’s chief executive, Mike Woliansky, as Woliansky explained that the facility will be shut down.
Several workers reacted with disbelief after the company’s human resources chief, Drew Pollick, explained they would be paid for Friday’s work but nothing beyond that because “we’re out of money.”
Workers were heard yelling “screw all of y’all” and ”F*** you!”
“You can’t tell me there’s absolutely no money,” one said.
“They got a better deal ― the ones that f***ed up,” added one worker, in apparent reference to the company’s leadership.
No Evil Foods, which is based in Weaverville, north of Asheville, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Woliansky said in the meeting that No Evil Foods was counting on a new infusion of cash that recently fell through. He said the pandemic presented a number of challenges for the company, and that leaders had decided to move to a co-manufacturing model, rather than have its own dedicated facility.
“The reality of the situation is the company has essentially run out of money, and we’re now really forced to make some really big, really difficult changes,” he said in the audio obtained by HuffPost. “It’s coming down to whether or not there will be a No Evil at all.”
Mike Rapier, one of the workers who spoke up during the meeting, said in an interview with HuffPost that the company’s leaders deserved all the backtalk. No Evil Foods describes itself as a purpose-driven food manufacturer, seeking to address “food insecurity, economic justice, and climate change” through plant-based options. Some of its products make cheeky nods to socialism, like the chicken-free Comrade Cluck.
Rapier said company leaders often spoke about the workforce as a family. That’s why Rapier, a production employee, expected more than a recommendation letter and a leaflet about an upcoming job fair.
“We would have big monthly meetings about core values and family and respect and save-the-world,” said Rapier, who added that he did not make the audio recording. “They preached all of this stuff, but then when it came down to it … they were very, very cutthroat.”
Companies generally are not required to provide severance pay unless a contract requires it. Sometimes employers are required to give 60 days notice or more under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act or similar state laws, but the mass layoff at No Evil Foods appears to be small enough so that the law does not apply.
Rapier estimated that there were between 30 and 50 workers laid off on Friday, though he said others had been let go earlier in the year. The layoffs were first reported by Insider.
This is not the first time workers have accused No Evil Foods of not meeting its socially conscious image. The company pushed back hard against a union drive last year, holding captive-audience meetings and urging workers to vote down the effort with the United Food and Commercial Workers union. When audio of those meetings were posted to the internet, the company made legal efforts to have them removed.
The company fired two workers involved in the organizing effort, claiming they had violated the facility’s social-distancing rules. The two workers, Jon Reynolds and Cortne Roche, accused the company of illegal retaliation, and the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel pursued a complaint. As Jacobin recently reported, No Evil Foods settled those claims by paying $20,000 to Reynolds and $22,500 to Roche.
Rapier said he really enjoyed working at No Evil Foods. He eats meat and didn’t buy into the plant-based-foods mission of the company, but he considered it a solid job and liked his co-workers. He left Ace Hardware a year ago to work at No Evil Foods.
According to Rapier, the company had recently invested in equipment that did not suit its production well, leading to frequent shutdowns. He said he had a feeling business was not going well. Still, Rapier said, given the mission of No Evil Foods, he assumed the company would try to give workers a softer landing.
“They talked the talk but they didn’t walk the walk with regard to their philosophy. They just dumped us,” he said. “This kind of upheaval is not right, the way they went about this.”
Rapier, 59, said his health insurance through No Evil Foods ended immediately Friday, and he isn’t sure if he’ll be able to find coverage he can afford. As for his next work plans, Rapier said he plans to go to that job fair.
Former was awful, the latter was passable. They'll get no more of my business.
“The company fired two workers involved in the organizing effort, claiming they had violated the facility’s social-distancing rules. “
A common Union trick from years ago. The Union has men hire in at a non union shop. The men then talk up unionism and get fired.
Then the Union sues because the men were fired for exercising their rights to talk about unions.
So the companies find other reasons to fire the unionists.
In our company, the men talking up unionism were fired for being just plain sorry workers, and I will admit, those men were lazy, sorry workers! You would think a Union would try and get in some good workers before they were fired.
Ouch. Lern2code.
Agree. I often get into debates about welfare payments. My point: Welfare doesn’t solve the problem, it perpetuates it. Take those same dollars and spend it on retraining and creating a skill set that’s valued in the marketplace. Welfare payments only exist for the training period. Use the German workfare model.
The Liberal says I don’t care about the poor. Somewhat true. I don’t care that they are poor, I want to know WHY they are poor and then devise a policy that bootstraps them out of poverty, not lock them into it.
The Liberal solution is to take money away from productive members of society and give it away. If I have 20% of the available economic pie and you have only 5%, the Liberal want to take 7.5% away from me and give it to you. Problem: if I do that with no increase in production, all we do is raise prices.
My solution, use monetary and fiscal policy to increase the SIZE of the economic pie. If we grow the pie by 10%, your income just increased by 10%. With stable prices, your real income and standard of living just increased. Liberals don’t understand that a rising tide lifts all boats. Instead, the want to sink the yachts and crowd everyone into rowboats.
You would think so, but it is the only track into the supermarket chains. These guys were under-water from go but they had shelf space from Day One in Kroger/Ralphs, in Meijers, in Target, and Walmart/Sams. Not only that, but they were incorporated into Kroger and Walmart apps from Day One, including coupons, recipes, etc.
Clearly they are not woke.
My first real job after college (35 years ago), was for a left-leaning fundraising company (extremely left leaning), at the time I had no real politics of my own and just wanted a job (in IT).
The founder was always preaching about the evil republicans, would only accept extreme-left clients to fundraise for, and he himself was a former union organizer at another job before he started this company.
As can be expected when you hire a bunch of left-leaning loons, once the staff reach about 100+/- employees, the fundraising staff (not me, was considered ‘management’) all decided they wanted to unionize and started unionizing efforts - and I can remember sitting in meetings with the president/owners and him threatening “I’ll shut down the f*cking company and move it to South Carolina before I will let a union in here....”
True, but at least GE makes an effort.
Unlike the evil foods company, big bad GE, that leftists love to bash, does far better.
I was in the first layoff the GE aircraft engine plant I worked in had ever had, in the 1990s.
GE bent over backwards, keeping us on with busy work for as long as they could.
Then many weeks warning, counseling sessions on how to interview, help with writing resumes, help finding jobs, you name it, GE did it.
The layoff was strictly by the numbers, your hire date.
There is no way GE could have done more for us.
Re-hiring was also strictly by the same numbers, as fair as possible.
I’m torn. Imagine watching a fight between a pack of rabid raccoons. If they all die, humanity wins. If not, in this specific example, I get to shoot the winners — seeing as the ‘coons are rabid.
But this is a HuffPost article which was recently acquired in February by a supposedly "woke" corporatist who had once owned HuffPo -- in fact, Peretti was the co-founder with the Hungarian houndess, and Lerer, and always amazingly, Breitbart -- and bought it back for 30 cents on the dollar and immediately fired 47 HuffPo loseurs.
Why is Huffpost even covering this? They love seeing Americans get screwed.
But, they acted like they were, for whatever reasons. Making "wokeness" a company policy may be a mistake. I quit drinking Coke because of their "wokeness". It's my way of trying to tell them they are supporting causes I don't support.
Because some animals are more equal than others.
I hear there are openings at the land mine removal company. The job is really a blast
Useless pap meets reality. Remember this when the Green New Deal hands it to the rest of us.
If you work for a company named “No Evil Food,” you should not be surprised when they screw you over.
Ashville is an beautiful part of the country but full of very ugly thinking people. They deserve what they are getting from “N-E-F.”
A self-described socially conscious vegan food manufacturer laid off its entire production staff in North Carolina on Friday, infuriating workers who said the lack of notice and severance pay was out of step with the company’s stated values
I LOL’d at that. Useful idiots are always the first to be purged.
My son works there now, same thing. The 737 max debacle hurt the company but they bent over backwards for the employees. That may have something to do with the lack of skilled aerospace machinists though.
What are they pissed about? This is socialism.
Scratch a virtue signaler and you get a sociopath—every time.
NO! Evil foods company fires entire work force!
When asked for comment, the management replied, “Let them eat good vegan roots & berries gathered from Mother Nature’s bounty!”
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