Sweet ‘N Low’s Flushing Avenue Factory To Fire Over 300 Workers In Shift Of Operations

Life is about to get a little less sweet for over 300 employees of national sugar-substitute company Sweet ‘N Low, which is phasing out manufacturing and packing operations at its Flushing Avenue factory in order to save money.

Instead, the company plans to shift manufacturing jobs to other locations around the United States, while maintaining the Cumberland Packing Corp building as its headquarters, according to president and chief executive Steven Eisenstadt in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.

The company’s Brooklyn operation had long remained less automated than competitors and had become noncompetitive, said Mr. Eisenstadt.

For the hundreds of union workers with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 2013, the announcement that they will be losing their jobs came as a shock. WSJ noted that:

The company had been in the midst of union negotiations since September, said Mark Carotenuto, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 2013, which represents the workers.

“At no point did they bring up any issues around competitive pressure that would force them out of Brooklyn,” he said. “For them to throw this at us at the 11th hour is unconscionable.”

The company declined to comment on union negotiations, and said it hoped to work to find the workers new jobs.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams also expressed disappointment over the impending layoffs, and invoked the company’s city and state subsidies as reason to not fire employees.

“Sweet’N Low has a proud history in Brooklyn, but the plan to eliminate hundreds of manufacturing jobs would be a truly bitter pill to swallow for our borough,” he said in a statement. “I urge Cumberland Packing Corporation to come back to the negotiating table and bargain in good faith.

“It is unacceptable for a company that has received city and state subsidies to turn its back on the taxpayers that made its growth possible,” he added. “We owe the workers whose livelihoods are in the balance nothing less than our absolute best in seeing how we can preserve these jobs.”

Around two-thirds of Cumberland’s workforce resides in Brooklyn. One of these employees, Delbert Ranger of Bed-Stuy, told Gothamist that he has worked at the company for six years and the news “hit me like a brick.”

Ranger, 52, lives in Bed-Stuy, and has worked for Cumberland for six years, operating a machine that packages Sugar in the Raw. He currently makes $9.92 an hour, which goes towards his $1,200/month rent, child support for his son, and care for his elderly mother. “Some people are still in denial that this is going to happen,” he added. “They’ve worked 10, 20 years at the company and had hopes of retiring from this company.”

The news about Sweet ‘N Low’s downsizing plan might not surprise anyone looking at New York City employment statistics, which show that manufacturing jobs have decreased in the past decade — from 114,100 in January 2005 to 73,400 in January 2015, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although jobs did rise to 74,600 by this past November.

However, it does seem a bit surprising when compared to its neighbors in and around the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where manufacturing businesses are growing, hiring, and expanding.