MUSKOGEE, Okla. — Employees at a Muskogee manufacturing plant are out of jobs after the business suddenly closed. The city says it’s impacting more than 100 people in the community.
Lemanuel London was one of the employees who lost his job.
‘It was a shock,” said Lemanuel London. “It was like wasn’t nobody thinking this was going to happen and it happened.”
London worked at Proform Group for 7 years. He started as a temporary employee, then was promoted to full-time.
“I learned everything I could,” said London. “It’s very disappointing that I had to go because I established a foundation in there and I’ve been there for so long and I learned everything.”
London says employees got a message on the company’s internal employee system on Wednesday around 6 p.m. He says everyone worked a full normal day, then they were told the facility was shutting down and everyone was out of work.
“It came out of nowhere,” said London. “It was just devastating and shocking, especially for people who’d been there a long time too.”
City leaders say they were also surprised.
“It’s a shocker and very sad,” said Muskogee Mayor Marlon Coleman.
Mayor Coleman said Proform Group didn’t provide the city any advance notice of the mass layoffs.
“We know that those are good, trained employees, so we’ve got a lot of movement that we think is going to positively impact those employees even though nothing can take away the shock from realizing in a short period of time that they don’t have a job anymore,” said Mayor Coleman.
He says the city is working with Port Muskogee on a career fair to keep these employees in town and quickly find them new jobs.
London is hoping something comes up soon.
“I was working there for so long, now I have to get used to working somewhere else,” said London.
2 News reached out to the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission about the legal requirements for mass layoffs. In Oklahoma, a WARN noticegenerally requires a company with more than 100 full-time workers to give employees 60 day’s notice in advance of a plant closing. The Commission says they did not get a WARN notice from Proform Group. They also said there are no consequences from their agency if a company doesn’t provide the notice.
They typically get 10-25 WARN notices a year.
OESC does provide state resources if you’ve been recently laid off click here.
In response to the layoffs in Muskogee, the OESC has set up a job fair.
The job fair will take place on Wednesday, March 20 at 717 S 32nd St. in Muskogee from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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