Lamb Weston Temporarily Closes Plants, Furloughs Over 600

Lamb Weston will temporarily close two potato processing plants in Eastern Washington. "Unfortunately, due to restaurant closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen consistent decreases in demand over the last few months, and we do not need to operate all of our facilities to meet our current demand," Lamb Weston spokeswoman Shelby Stoolman told Capital Press.

Approximately 700 team members have been placed on furlough for the shutdown period, Stoolman said. The layoff of the workers will be effective June 15th, with the temporary shutdowns expected to last for 90 days.

"We expected that to happen based upon the volume of storage potatoes they turned back to growers, that there would be some down time," said Dale Lathim, executive director of the Potato Growers of Washington. The organization negotiates pre-season contracts on behalf of growers representing more than 80% of the contracted frozen processing potato acres in the state.

Washington’s Employment Security Department issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification stating that the number of workers who will be laid off would be 360 in Connell and 300 in Warden. The Lamb Weston layoffs represent a job loss of 11% in Warden and 6.5% for Connell.

The Employment Security Department will summon staff from its local rapid response team and worksource to conduct outreach to affected employees of Lamb Weston.