Once the contracts are finished and there are no more to do, finishing up the closing of a plant of that size takes time. A skeletin crew is kept on hand in each department to clean out that department of movable items as in prepare them for shipment. Then that crew sees more layoffs. Those left will be finishing packing, shipping and going through files to determine what is shipped/moved where. That can mean that some files will move to one location and others to a different one. This can take months. Once everything has been disposed of that is to be disposed of and things are shipped that needs to be shipped and security for the plant is contracted out, the last few remaining (which in our case was 5 people) will walk out that door and lock it. We had 1500 hourly employees and about 120 or so salaried. Those who were on salary were transferred if possible. Others like myself, was laid off. I chose to be laid off because my husband worked at the construction yard next door.

Again, the plant can close on one date and lock the doors on another.