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Major NE kosher meat distributor closes doors

By jabbett
Published October, 24 2007 9:26 am
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SWB New England of West Bridgewater, MA, suddenly closed its doors two weeks ago leaving 140 employees out of work. Media reports are clueless as to the reasons for the closure, except noting that “SWB was struggling for a long time.” A source close to the Kosher Blog indicated that SWB was involved in serious buy-out negotiations with Kedem’s food distribution branch, HKS Marketing, which was interested in expanding into New England market. In the end, they couldn’t agree on a purchase price, the deal fell through abruptly, and SWB could no longer sustain itself.

5 comments so far (Post your own)
1.At 12:01 pm on November 4th, 2007, J wrote:

What wasn’t mentioned here was the sudden impact on 140 employees. Tuesday Oct 9 The closing was announced. On Wednesday, the office staff was laid off and on Thursday, as they arrived to work, the warehouse and driving staff were laid off. That was 24 hours notice for some and 48 hours notice for the rest. A clear violation of the Federal Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Their abrupt closing is being investigated by Senators Kerry and Kennedy as to if they violated the federal WARN Act.

2.At 2:07 pm on November 7th, 2007, SF wrote:

What a terrible way to treat people who were such loyal workers. They (SWB) will find some way around the fact that they BROKE THE LAW in not giving the legal amount of notice to workers.They will land on their feet unlike many of the people who worked there.Good luck to all the former employees.May you all find jobs where you will be respected and paid fairly for your hard work.

3.At 2:40 pm on November 7th, 2007, Howard wrote:

It strikes me as unlikely that the WARN act was violated here. There are three exemptions to the 60 day notification rule, two of which could potentially apply (excerpted below):

“The exceptions to 60-day notice are:

(1) Faltering company. This exception, to be narrowly construed, covers situations where a company has sought new capital or business in order to stay open and where giving notice would ruin the opportunity to get the new capital or business, and applies only to plant closings;

(2) unforeseeable business circumstances. This exception applies to closings and layoffs that are caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time notice would otherwise have been required;”

Running out of money after a hoped-for deal fails to go through could potentially be seen as a faltering company situation (on its face, possibly a hard case given the wording of the rule) or unforseeable (certainly more plausible depending on the nature of the negotiations).

4.At 9:03 pm on November 18th, 2007, Jeff Sias wrote:

[moderated] If any of my sale guys need a job please e-mail me at jeffsias@yahoo.com
and I will try to help you guys out..Happy Holidays guys Jeff

5.At 5:58 pm on November 20th, 2007, Kosha Kid wrote:

I use to work for SWB in the wherehouse and I now have a job with anouther Kosha company and they are looking for people to hire. You guys can e-mail me you resume and I will give them to my boss Pete. Send to koshakid@aol.com Oh the company is out of Brooline. Happy Thanksgiveing
[moderated] Jake Berg peace out!