Residents of Mounds, Illinois are coming to terms with an announcement Wednesday that the Oil-Dri plant is slashing its workforce in half.
The company is taking its kitty litter production to Mississippi. Up to 38 of the facility’s 60 employees received pink slips. Some were terminated immediately and others take effect within 60 days. Mounds mayor Wayman Butler says the layoffs came out the blue.
“Didn’t know or heard any rumors or had any inclination that the plant was having any type of problem in keeping their employees for whatever reason, you know, or cut back on supplies or any other type of problem. It was very much a surprise.”
Butler says Oil-Dri is the most important employer in the community of eleven hundred people. It will be difficult, he says, to absorb that many people into Pulaski County’s struggling economy.
