Plant's closing has town in pickle

La Junta residents are reeling from wave of job losses

Deedee Correll, The Gazette

Published December 7, 2005 at midnight

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LA JUNTA - The cutoff date for life as a lot of people in this town know it is Feb. 3.

Two months from now, the last batch of brine-soaked cucumbers will roll up the conveyor belts at the pickle factory, grinding toward the slicer that will make them into hamburger dill chips, or the blenders that mash them into sweet relish.

Mary Martinez will run her yellow-stained hands over her last pickles, picking out the rejects. Clementina Torres will wedge her last gherkin into a bottle, her husband, Juan, will tighten his last lid and the pickle plant where generations of lower Arkansas Valley residents have worked will close.

That day will leave 153 people without jobs, a critically high number in this town of about 7,500 - a number made more devastating because the region's other major employer, a bus plant in Lamar with 300 workers, also is closing.

Altogether, 450 living-wage jobs will vanish from a valley where work already is tough to find.

"I have all my life here in this place," said Santiago Vasquez, a foreman who's worked here for 33 years.

'Don't let that happen to us'

The first bomb hit Nov. 15: Neoplan USA, a bus manufacturing plant and one of Lamar's largest employers, will close Jan. 13 because it couldn't raise $10 million in new capital.

No one was shocked; rumors had circulated for a year.

That didn't make it any easier for the town of 8,500 about 60 miles east of La Junta on U.S. 50.

"Please don't let that happen to us," Bud Ozzello, principal at La Junta High School, thought that night.

La Junta is as dependent on Bay Valley Foods as Lamar is on Neoplan. Although it's changed ownership over the years, the plant has long sat just off the highway, with a rock landscaped sign reading "We (heart) pickles."

Few here haven't worked at the pickle plant. The mayor, for example, spent his summers as a teen cutting green beans, back when the factory also did other vegetables.

Many people have worked there 20 years or more; whole families draw their paychecks from Bay Valley Foods, where the air is sharp with vinegar and salt, and when employees go to the bank after work, someone usually teases, "It smells like pickles in here." Nov. 16, the day after Neoplan's announcement, the pickle plant manager called a meeting. Martinez figured it would be another safety lecture.

She realized something was wrong when she saw the big boss standing there.

They were, company officials told them, victims of higher costs and a waning taste for pickles.

"We all cried," said Martinez, who has worked there 40 years.

Town hopes to replace plant

One question immediately loomed: What would they do? They'll find someone to take Bay Valley Foods' place, that's what they'll do, Mayor Don Rizzuto said.

"We can't take the time to panic," he said. "We're marketing hard nationwide already."

Rizzuto ticks off the reasons other manufacturers should find the plant attractive: It's a state-of-the-art facility with new parking lots. The distribution center is brand-new. It's strategically located - on a direct route to the Front Range and near the planned Ports-to-Plains highway.

"You can't look at the glass as half-empty. It's half-full, and let's fill it," Rizzuto said.

Like the entire valley, La Junta has struggled before, he said, especially when the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railroad closed its district office in the 1980s.

When a manufacturer of plumbing fittings closed, 400 people lost their jobs. City officials reacted by attracting other companies - a manufacturer of school lockers and a bolt-and-nut plant.

"What I'm trying to say is we made up for the void," Rizzuto said. "We will make up for the loss by recruiting somebody else."

His counterpart in Lamar, Nelva Heath, is taking a similar positive approach. She has to, she said. The closure means a $10 million reduction in payroll and a significant loss of property taxes.

Both towns have plenty of offers of help. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., toured the pickle plant last week, and state officials have called. In Prowers County, the Southeast Colorado Enterprise Development Inc. will offer incentives to companies to relocate to the area, director Janet Anderson said.

"First you've got to find someone with an interest in a rural area," Anderson said. "That's very difficult."

Even under the best scenario, another plant probably wouldn't open in the next couple years, she said.

That leaves hundreds of people without a paycheck.

If they don't act fast, Heath predicted, most will be gone within six months.

"It's scary, is all I can say," said Judy Brown, who works in accounts payable at the pickle plant.

Vasquez is thinking about moving to Denver, near his son. He's 55, too young to retire and too old to look for a minimum-wage job.

The pay here starts at $11 an hour, a good wage for La Junta.

"I'm not gonna go work for $5 an hour," Vasquez said.

Martinez, who started at the plant in 1964, is thinking about drawing on early Social Security.

"There are no other jobs here," she said.

There soon will be new jobs in nearby Rocky Ford, where Harvest Foods is converting an old onion-processing plant into a burrito factory. It will open in March and hire 150 people during the next two years.

Chief Executive Officer Bill McKnight said he's been flooded with calls from job seekers.

"We've had 200 applications in the last week," he said.

Question looms, 'What next?'

La Junta has its Christmas decorations up, strung on poles along U.S. 50. But spirits aren't so high along Colorado Avenue, the main street.

"Whatever happens at the pickle plant will affect everyone," said Glenn Parker, who lives in Rocky Ford.

"Our agricultural community has gone to heck. If we're not an agricultural community and we're not a manufacturing community, what do we have to survive?" Nancy Boatwright, who owns an arts-and-crafts supply store downtown, is more optimistic. Perhaps companies will realize how low the cost of living is, what a good place it is to raise a family, she said.

That's another worry for city leaders - can young people stay and make a living? Many Lamar teens choose to leave, but eventually they return, Lamar High School Principal Allan Medina said.

"We're going to do everything we can so that if our kids want to stay, there's something for them," Medina said.

Over at the La Junta plant, people are continuing the work they've done for years.

Martinez bends over a conveyor belt, picking out broken or rotten pickles.

Clementina Torres hovers over the winding line of glass jars. As a machine spits gherkins into them, she presses down on the pickles poking out of the top.

She's been here 28 years, and her husband 29.

They don't want to move away, they said as they ate their lunch in the employees' break room. How can they? This is home. How will they find jobs with health insurance like they have now? The weeks leading up to Feb. 3 actually will be busier than ever, using up cucumbers so they don't go to waste.

Some of the 153 employees were on layoff status, but they will be asked to come back to help.

Then they will have to face the question: what next?

"I don't know," said Lisa Sedillo, who works in the plant office. "I really can't believe it still."

The plant isn't just a place to work; it's part of La Junta.

"Grandpas and sons and grandsons," Vasquez said. "They all came to this place."

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