January 16, 2017 — Illinois-based Mazzetta Co. remains mute on the fate of its Gloucester Seafood Processing subsidiary, but a state agency on Friday confirmed it has spent about five months helping place workers laid off from the Blackburn Industrial Park facility.
Ken Messina, business service manager of the state’s Executive Office of Workforce Development, said staffers from his agency’s Rapid Response Team first began working with GSP management in August and were at the seafood processing plant as recently as last week.
“We were able to help them with their layoff situation,” Messina said. “Last week was the last meeting that we had up there. For us, it was the end of the closure.”
Officials from Mazzetta, based in Highland Park, Illinois, have not responded to multiple requests for comment, so it is unclear whether the layoffs — which Messina pegged at about 175 — will lead to the international seafood company completely shuttering the Gloucester business it opened in 2015.
Silence from the top
Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken on Friday said she hasn’t heard a word from Mazzetta or local GSP officials since she met with GSP executive Dave Fitzgerald about three months ago at City Hall.
“They didn’t say anything about layoffs then and they didn’t say anything about closing,” Romeo Theken said. “They don’t call the city when they’re laying people off. They call the city when they’re closing and I have not received a phone call from them saying they’re shutting the doors.”
Romeo Theken conceded she also heard reports from constituents about large layoffs at GSP, but was unaware the state’s Executive Office of Workforce Development had been working with the company for five months.