Employees said the brevity of the announcement had caught them off guard.
"In six minutes, they took 25 years of my life away," said Joe Egan, 48, a maintenance worker, as he commiserated with fellow workers at a bar. At the almost-deserted factory itself, a plaque in the lobby identified the operation as the 1989 "plant of the year" of Kraft Foods, a previous owner.
Good Humor-Breyers is now owned by Unilever, a worldwide conglomerate based in the Netherlands that posted about $2.4 billion in profits last year. The West Philadelphia facility will be the third Breyers plant closed by Unilever since it bought the company two years ago, including one in Los Angeles that is scheduled to close by the end of the year. Good Humor-Breyers operates seven other factories around the nation.
John T. Gould Jr., a spokesman for Good Humor-Breyers, said management had
tentatively decided that the Philadelphia plant "cannot be operated efficiently within the family that we now have." Built in 1924, the facility at 700 S. 43d St. is the company's oldest.
A company news release cited "several economic and marketing considerations" without elaborating. The statement noted that Good Humor- Breyers had increased both its sales and market share in the last two years but concluded: "There still remains the need to consolidate operations to stay competitive in the marketplace."
Company officials said they would give union leaders an opportunity to make a case for keeping the plant open. Such consultation is required under the federal plant-closing law, which says employees and their bargaining representative must be given advance notice of a decision to close - even a tentative one.
"They certainly will have the opportunity to propose alternatives," said Gould, the company spokesman. "We will then look at them and take them into consideration."
