A Lancaster County man who has worked 30 years in the same printing plant under three different owners tried to fathom what would happen to him after LSC Communications closes that plant in March.
Thursday he was given a packet explaining the "separation pay plan" from LSC, which announced it would close its two Lancaster city plants, remnants of R.R. Donnelley & Sons, which had a more than 50-year legacy of employment in Lancaster County. The West plant, at 1375 Harrisburg Pike, currently employs 380 workers, and Lancaster East, at 216 Greenfield Road, employs 276.
The 30-year worker is but one of the 656 employees expected to lose their jobs by March 31.
Printing had been his first job right out of high school.
Where would he, a man in his 50s, go next with highly specialized skills in a dying industry? Who would pay him close to $30 an hour – and give him five-week vacation that his loyalty to this job had earned him?
Maybe a job in health care, he mused, but that required training.
The LSC print production worker’s voice quivered.
"I fell in love with printing in high school," he said. "It’s really all I wanted to do."
CHAD UMBLE | Staff WriterHe’s not alone in his worries. In his small department group, he is the least senior worker and other longtime workers share his concerns.
LNP | LancasterOnline agreed not to use names of workers interviewed for this story because they worried about retribution for speaking to the media. According to workers and documents obtained by LNP | LancasterOnline, LSC CEO Stephanie Mains directed workers not to talk with the media and not post anything about the situation on social media.
That same restrictive approach was apparent Thursday afternoon as an LNP | LancasterOnline reporter and photographer stood in the public right-of-way outside of one of the two LSC production plants in Lancaster County seeking comment from employees leaving at the end of their shifts. After about an hour three men in street clothes and no identification walked out from the plant and asked the pair what they were doing, saying employees had been asked not to speak to the media and that there was a designated company spokesperson handling all such inquiries. Asked by the reporter if they were part of "management or something," one of the group replied by saying, "Or something."
Other documents given to workers and obtained by LNP | LancasterOnline said employees will receive no severance payment unless they work until the company says they can go. The company is offering severance of a week’s pay for each year worked up to 13 weeks, according to those documents.
The 30-year worker who is now in his 50s said is grateful for the money, which will come weekly like a paycheck, but it is a far cry from what employees used to get when the plants were owned by R.R. Donnelley & Sons, which printed phone books, among other items.
He recalled a fellow worker who retired after 40 years who received close to a year’s salary.
A 37-year-old worker at the west plant who has been there three years is anxious about the future but feels especially bad for colleagues who have spent decades with the company.
"Most of them just feel so disrespected because 13 weeks’ pay is nothing compared to what they’ve given to the company. All the opportunities they’ve given up (when they) chose to stay here instead have been for nothing," the worker said.
The 37-year-old employee said there had been rumors that the east plant would be closing but that the west plant would be OK for at least another year or two. To learn this week that both locations will close has cast a pall on the plant, the worker said.
“The general mood around here is that it seems people don’t want to really work or make their numbers. It’s kind of depressing – a lot of people have been around here a long time. Even people who haven’t, it’s just so sudden,” the worker said.
The severance pay calculation, which doesn’t include overtime that was a big part of many people’s pay, feels unfair, the worker said.
"They expect us to stay here and work and help them make money until the very end, and then they will continue our pay on a weekly basis for less than we are getting paid now."
"A lot of people have worked here 40-plus years and to be told right after Christmas that the place they gave most of their life to is closing suddenly, with no consideration to their well-being afterwards, is just catastrophic."
'Soft firing'
The worker in his 50s said he was not surprised the plants are closing: work has been dwindling and cost-cutting became sharper since the pandemic, even though both plants remained open.
"I’m not saying there was anything nefarious here: we all knew it was coming for a while," he said.
After LSC Communications was purchased by a private equity company in December 2020, Connecticut-based Atlas Holdings, he felt there was a greater focus on cost cutting and saw more contracts directed to plants in other states, including a longtime customer Cigars International. The local plants went into a downward spiral as more workers and even supervisors left and temporary workers were hired, the worker in his 50s said.
"Work was slowing and slowing under the guise of cost cutting. Employees took the brunt," he said. "We weren't even getting full weeks."
Last spring the company had voluntary furloughs, which wasn’t unusual for slow periods, but workers expected production to pick up in the usual busy fall season going to the holiday catalog season.
The busy season never came to the Lancaster plants. Signs of decline included lack of "consumables" like paper and ink being on hand when needed.
"We could see a steady decline," he said. "It sure seemed like soft firing. It definitely felt like it."
Between spring 2020 and November 2022, the company shed almost half of its Lancaster workforce, according to LNP | LancasterOnline archive and state records.
"We started bleeding people," he said. "Press operators, shop people – these are not people you can hire off the street."
On top of it all, a strike at a paper mill in Finland complicated the company’s finances while it sought paper sources.
"We were spending incredible amounts for crap paper," he said.
He said in the last year there was difficulty getting five-day work weeks for all the full-time employees.
"And a conundrum there is if you work three days in a week, you can't claim partial unemployment because in three days you've earned more than the weekly amount you’re allowed to make … and still be able to claim," he said. "People started making hard decisions to leave and look for greener pastures. Good, long-term people who had all the skills that go with long term employment. Kellogg's and Arconic have been beneficiaries of a lot of our people."
In the last six months work that was always done in Lancaster had been sent to other plants.
"Taking work out of here and money out of our pockets – that's when we started feeling things were not going to end well here," he said. "Back in November, we had the pressroom shut down, nobody worked, the week before Thanksgiving. I had to take a week of unemployment. The bindery was shut down Thanksgiving week and the week after, I believe. And it’s been sparse ever since."
Like the 37-year-old worker, the older man said many of his colleagues thought the east plant would close and work would be moved over to the west – and they’d be OK for a time.
"But honestly east was just barely hanging on like us, with very little work. So most of us were very surprised when word came out that both plants are getting whacked," he said.
He said the announcement was made Thursday by Vice President of Manufacturing Fred Thigpen and someone from corporate human relations.
"They had three unannounced people with them – two dressed in black and very imposing looking," he said. "We've surmised they were security of some sort. Understandable, crazy things happen these days, but that did nothing for the mood in the room."
