Getting laid off can be traumatic regardless of the timing, but it’s even worse if you’re not given any notice ahead of time. That was the case for nearly 300 employees at a Johnsonville Sausage packing plant in Illinois just last month, leaving the small community shocked.
Unfortunately, these types of layoffs aren’t uncommon these days, which means job security is becoming less secure for those in manufacturing positions…
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Johnsonville is a US-based sausage company based in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. It’s been in operation since 1945, which means its products have been staples in the kitchens of several generations.
Johnsonville manufactures over 80 varieties of sausage, including pork sausage, chicken, and turkey sausage, to accommodate people with varying dietary preferences.
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Johnsonville describes itself as “the most popular brand of sausage in the United States” and is available in more than 45 countries.
It’s not clear how many processing plants Johnsonville has. However, we DO know that the majority of its processing is now done in Wisconsin and Kansas. That is, after the closure that blindsided nearly 300 employees at the Johnsonville plant in Illinois, leaving them jobless…
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On June 2, 2025, Johnsonville abruptly closed its plant in the small community of Momence, Illinois (about 50 miles south of Chicago). The plant had been operated by Johnsonville since 1995. And the worst part? The employees didn’t see it coming.
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According to Lupe Hernandez, a 25-year employee at the Johnsonville plant, said, “We felt like a light switch just got turned off,” with the announcement of the closure reaching employees the same day of the closure.
A total of 274 employees at Momence Packing Company are impacted by the sudden shuttering of the Johnsonville plant.
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Most states enforce WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988) laws to help support employees by providing advance notice of layoffs and planned closures.
Illinois has such a law, which states, “Illinois WARN applies to employers with 75 or more full-time employees (excluding part-time workers) and requires employers to provide 60 days advance notice of pending plant closures or mass layoffs.”
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It’s unclear why Johnsonville didn’t provide the required 60 days’ advanced notice of the plant’s closure. It has been shared that Johnsonville will be providing employees of the closed plant with pay and benefits for 60 days, so that’s at least something…
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In 2024, the Meadowside plant in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, was slated to close by the end of the year. However, Johnsonville decided to keep the plant open as the end-of-the-year deadline loomed. The closure would have impacted 390 workers.
That particular plant manufactures ready-to-eat sausages, so the decision to keep the plant open was partly attributed to growing demand for ready-to-eat sausage.
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Food and beverage processing plants seem to be closing right and left.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics cites some reasons for this trend: “The change in skills required to perform new tasks in manufacturing, along with import competition and a decline in mobility, have contributed to the decline of employment rate for manufacturing since 2000. This decline has been even more persistent than those of other periods, many of which saw an eventual bounce back.”
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Here’s what Johnsonville had to say about the sudden closing of the Illinois plant: “We made the difficult decision after evaluating how best to optimize our operations network to address current and future growth. This decision was based on optimizing our operations across our other newer facilities.”
So Johnsonville is moving its operations to newer facilities. (In fact, the Momence location is set to be demolished by the end of 2025, 63 years after it was built in 1962.)
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The Illinois closure doesn’t necessarily mean that business is bad for Johnsonville. In fact, consumer demand for processed meats seems to be steady.
According to a 2019 study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Americans are consuming less red meat than they used to – but the same amount of processed meat.
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The closure of the packing plant in Momence, Illinois, was sudden, to say the very least. Employees were blindsided, and many criticized the last-minute decision by Johnsonville.
Johnsonville is moving its operations to newer facilities, and business seems to be good as demand for processed meats remains steady…which makes the blindsiding of all of those employees even more unsettling.
What do you think of the last-minute closure and layoff of the nearly 300 Momence employees? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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