Deli meat manufacturer Boar's Head has announced it's indefinitely closing its Jarratt, Virginia, plant after a listeria outbreak killed nine people in 18 states. However, the closure of this plant has left the small town of under 1,000 people searching for its next move and that may not be easy to find.
How will the plant closure affect Jarrett? The Boar's Head plant was the largest private employer in Jarrett, said The Washington Post. It put about 500 people to work in a town of just 637.
The plant was a "good employer in the community, and there aren't a lot of other options for folks," Jonathan Williams, the head of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, the union representing the plant workers, said to the Post. The closure has "created a sense of unease in Jarratt and larger neighboring towns, where residents said good-paying jobs are hard to come by," said The New York Times. Employees were "getting benefits, packages, severance pay, but I don't think it's worth it anywhere near enough losing a job you have worked your whole life," Boar's Head IT specialist Artie Moorman said to WRIC-TV Petersburg.
What other small towns have been affected by company closures? A small town being decimated by corporate closures is not a new phenomenon. Reports were documenting the issue as far back as the 1990s. Some of the companies cutting back have been retail chains. While store closings are "spread among urban and tertiary markets, many of these retailers have closed locations in smaller towns throughout the U.S.," said Forbes in 2017.
In Farmersville, Ohio, businesses are "doing their best to stay afloat after seeing others close, including the town's major bank branch," said WDTN-TV Dayton. The town of Stratton, Nebraska, used to have "two grocery stores, two barber shops and a pharmacist," but most of those are gone today, said NPR. Beyond business closures, there are concerns about the "future of many rural small towns as the older generation retires without young people to replace them." |