BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (From news reports) -- When Georgia-Pacific announced layoffs last week, officials said employees would be released in March, but contractors say they have already been let go.
A contract worker said that he and his fellow employees were shocked when they were told to pack up and leave with no warning.
The terminated worker did not want to be identified to protect the contractor he works for.
"It came at pretty much a surprise and it kind of blind sided me because we thought the mill was doing really well," said the worker.
The unidentified worker says his crew started work as usual at Georgia-Pacific on Thursday when supervisors told them to pack up their tools and leave.
"Our little group met, we talked about it, and we decided to take the rest of the day off and decided to come back another day to get our tools and equipment out of there," said the worker.
The Georgia-Pacific Paper Mill near Zachary announced that starting in March, they plan to lay between 600-700 employees because of a drop in demand for its paper products.
"I know all the little other mills up and down the river are probably going to be flooded with applications and resumes," said the worker.
While the contract worker can transfer and work in New Orleans, he's concerned about the longtime employees that worked directly for Georgia-Pacific, who don't have a place to go.
"Some people have been at the paper mill 20-30 years, you know, those are the ones that concern me the most," said the worker.
The parish and state workforce agencies are combining resources to help those Georgia-Pacific workers being laid-off, find new jobs.
