Pilgrims Pride to close Dalton plant

In Dalton, a chicken processing plant employing 280 people will close in the next sixty days.

Pilgram's Pride has been having financial difficulties for the past year and even filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in December. And in a statement on Monday, CEO Don Jackson said the Texas based
poultry producer will "continue to look for opportunities to improve our cost structure as we reorganize the company."

Part of that means shutting down the Dalton Plant. Those operations will be consolidated with another plant in Chattanooga. If there's any good news, it's that the comapny's
Cohutta Georgia hatchery will stay open.

Over the past year and a half, the Dalton area has seen a string of plant closings or consolidations. Unemployment in the area is currently at just under twelve percent, according to the state department of labor.

Jury sides with fired poultry workers

A federal jury has awarded $415,000 to two former northeast Georgia poultry plant employees who were fired for complaining about fraud, hiring discrimination and other abuses by supervisors. The jury found that ConAgra Poultry Co. in Clarke County - later bought by Pilgrim's Pride Corp. - fired the women in September 2003 after they blew the whistle on an assistant to the human resources manager who made a fake Social Security card for an illegal immigrant who worked a side job for the plant's general manager.

The panel also found that the manager's assistant authorized falsified insurance coverage so another employee could claim his sister and nephew - also illegal immigrants - as dependents on his health plan. In a decision Tuesday, the jury awarded Scarlet Reyna and Maria Ortega a combined $415,000 for lost wages and benefits, as well as emotional pain and mental anguish.