Updated 5:37 p.m.
Keurig Green Mountain is laying off 53 manufacturing employees, including 35 in Vermont, the company said Thursday.
The coffee and beverage giant notified Vermont Labor Commissioner Lindsay Kurrle that the layoffs involve employees at its Essex, Williston and Waterbury locations, according to Kurrle.
The layoffs are part of an effort to consolidate and restructure the company’s manufacturing operations, spokesperson Katie Gilroy wrote in an email to Seven Days.
It’s not the first effort to slim down the company. Keurig Green Moutain laid off 200 workers during cuts in 2015, and an additional 108 after it ended its cold-brewing line the following year.
The company currently operates in five U.S. states and Canada. In January, Keurig announced it plans to merge with Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
The Department of Labor requires notice of layoffs only if the cuts affect more than 50 Vermont employees, Kurrle said. But Keurig Green Mountain nonetheless agreed to provide the state a list of employees. The Department of Labor will reach out to them with information about unemployment benefits and other job openings, according to Kurrle.
Keurig will offer the employees a severance package, according to Gilroy.
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Um . . . How about you stop trolling the internet and praising yourself during work hours and do the auditing that the taxpayers are paying you to do?
Roman V – I’m afraid you missed the point (again). My original comment was about the value of the state’s business incentive program, not Keurig or the economy at large.
As for your false charge of negativity, I guess you’ve missed the hundreds of posts over the years where I’ve pushed back (with facts) in response to those who refer ad nauseum to the phony rankings that supposedly show Vermont as a failed state circling the bowl.
And I presume you were never in legislative committees over the years when I said many times that Vermont should stick to the basics and forget questionable “incentive” programs. That means real long-term investments in the only things we have control over: quality of life, workforce education & training, and infrastructure, including social infrastructure like affordable housing, energy efficiency, and child care.
Nor are you aware of the other relevant work I’ve done such as Phase 6 of The Vermont Job Gap Study on strategic import substitution, or the report for the State Treasurer on using pension funds for Economically Targeted Investments, or the effort to adopt preferential purchasing policies to help Vermont-based businesses, and so on.
Unfortunately, not knowing anything about me didn’t stop you from attacking me and completely mischaracterizing my work.
As for your crack about me as a politician, I am an elected official so it goes with the territory, but here I am engaging with you. Imagine. How many others do that?
Finally, notwithstanding your expectations (whatever they may be), I encourage you to visit the Auditor’s website and learn what we actually do.
And in Randolph, homegrown LEDdynamics is breaking ground on a $5M expansion and adding 40 jobs. But that kind of good news doesn’t conform to the obligatory “Vermont is a terrible place to do business” trope that grabs headlines. Unless, of course, you are VTDigger: https://vtdigger.org/2018/06/01/leddynamic…
This rotten pessimism about Vermont’s economy is pervasive and self-defeating. Even our dear governor can’t help but qualify good news with dreary facts about an aging workforce and unfilled jobs. We don’t seem to grasp difference between knowing the bad news and shouting it from the rooftops. What we tell the rest of the country is what they will hear and believe.
Hoffer: your selection of the facts you deploy is negative. How many new jobs has Keurig created over the years? I would wager that it’s well above 361. If they created 1000 jobs, say, but lay off 361 — that is not a “loss” of 361 jobs — it’s a net gain of 639. You conveniently leave that number, whatever it is, out. And don’t tell me you don’t have these numbers — isn’t that your job, to know these figures? Aside from jobs, how much have they paid in taxes? How much have they invested? You leave these facts out, and yet you claim that “a meaningful conversation about public policy must begin with an honest appraisal of the effectiveness of current efforts.” These all seem at least as relevant to me as the number you cited.
You also did not respond to my point: you have yet to propose a substantive alternative scheme for encouraging economic development that is realistic or workable. Reading your other public comments, about how you question that a state can meaningfully influence economic growth with policy, it’s clear that your alternative is to do nothing, since you think growth will happen anyway.
That doesn’t strike me as a very progressive attitude toward policy, no matter your credentials. To me a progressive believes that government has the power to correct market imperfections in order to make better lives for citizens. Your comments on this matter seem less in line with that ideology and more in line with stirring up animosity against businesses to win emotional votes, rather than votes based on rational analysis.
All I am interested in is more action, and fewer words. You ran on not being a politician before — and now, that’s exactly what you look like to me.
“Keurig was awarded $10 million from VEPC and the VTP over the years.”
Interesting that Keurig, previously largely owned by a billionaire, then sold as a public company, was awarded $10 million from the state.
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?statesum=VT
Whatever happened to “free enterprise”?
Governments in the U.S. seem to be the largest creators of billionaires, via subsidies.
Those billionaires then go on to use their publicly funded wealth to influence government, in their favor (read “A Republic No More by Jay Cost).
It seems only suckers try to do their own thing anymore, when the “successful” are receiving billions in grants.
No wonder the U.S. work ethic seems to be getting worse & worse.
Everyone’s a slave to the new-feudal Lords, whom are those tied closest to top government officials.
I just moved to Vermont from a highly Republican/Red state, and it seems the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is which group each decides to throw public money at.
Governments in the U.S. has become a cash cow, and anytime you have any entity in control of so much money, you have the biggest shysters looking to control that entity.
Just like Mobs.
“The first two of those 3 years would be under a Democratic governor, and all three of those years would be under an overwhelmingly Democratic dominated Legislature.”
First, the issue is not the economy at large, but the value of the business incentives as an investment of taxpayer funds.
Second, I said nothing about politics, parties or elected officials so I’m not sure why you are viewing this as a partisan issue. I don’t.
“We’ve now lost 361 jobs in the last three years.”
The first two of those 3 years would be under a Democratic governor, and all three of those years would be under an overwhelmingly Democratic dominated Legislature.
RomanV First, I have been addressing the issue of questionable business incentive programs for almost 20 years, not ten. While working under contract for State Auditor Ed Flanagan in the `90s, I was the principal author of the first review of the original program (EATI). That report was released in 2000.
Later, while self-employed, I helped others (including the legislature’s economist) highlight serious problems in the program that led to major changes by the legislature in 2006. Pretty sure that counts as working to improve economic development programs.
Second, its interesting that you characterize the presentation of relevant facts as being negative. A meaningful conversation about public policy must begin with an honest appraisal of the effectiveness of current efforts. There’s only so much money so we need to ensure that we’re getting a good return on existing programs. If not, we should reallocate the resources for more effective programs.
I’ve been doing that for 30 years and am proud of it (and for years before I ran for office so your comment about wanting attention for campaign purposes is baloney). Moreover, you see my posts on this (and related subjects) because reporters rarely include such information. In my view, readers benefit from more information.
Growing businesses make bets that don’t always pay off — a business that doesn’t make big bets won’t succeed. It’s unfortunate for those affected, and I hope they get the support they need.
Re the preceding comment, after a decade of making the same points, I’m beginning to suspect that Mr. Hoffer’s focus is more on his own PR and reelection than actually improving anything about the way the state does economic development. He’s never proposed any sort of substantive alternative — he seems to enjoy the attention he gets from being negative rather than working to improve economic development programs.
Keurig was awarded $10 million from VEPC and the VTP over the years.
We’ve now lost 361 jobs in the last three years.