Transitional team to help G-P workers facing layoffs

BANGOR – With 60 employees of the Georgia-Pacific mill in Old Town to be laid off starting in January, the Penobscot County Transitional Team has been busy lining up resources to help the employees find new work.

Many of the employees losing their jobs have been with the company for 15 to 25 years – veterans of their workplace – so losing these jobs is a lot like coming to grips with a death in the family, team members said.

“The rug’s been pulled out from underneath their lives,” Rob Brown, an organizer with the Food and Medicine program of the Greater Bangor Area Central Labor Council, said during Wednesday’s meeting of the transitional team.

“It’s in society’s best interest in making this smooth and quick,” Brown said later.

The layoffs, announced earlier this fall, will start to take place in January but likely will not happen all at once but be spread over several months, team members said.

The team comprises labor, public and private social services, and government representatives developed out of the closure of Eastern Fine Paper Co. in Brewer nearly two years ago.

In the wake of other layoffs, the team that once focused on the Brewer mill, expanded to assist layoffs throughout the county.