Workers Laid Off Without Notice Get $650K In Settlement

Workers at a Merrill window manufacturer who were laid off without notice in late 2019 will receive an average of around $5,000 in a legal settlement announced Thursday.

State law requires companies to give employees 60 days’ notice of layoffs. When Semco Windows and Doors closed at the end of 2019, many of the company’s 141 employees didn’t learn of the closure until several days later, when they would have returned from a holiday break. Employees filed a complaint with the state Department of Workforce Development, then sued the company for $682,864 in lost wages. They said that was the amount workers would have earned if the company had served them layoff notices in December 2019, allowing them to be paid for work for another two months.

At a press conference outside the Lincoln County Courthouse in Merrill, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said the state Department of Justice had negotiated a legal settlement for $650,000 from the Semling-Menke Company, which owned Semco. That money will be distributed to more than 130 employees who qualify for the payments under state law.

“What happened a year and eight months ago was very tragic,” said Luke Kramer, a representative of the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters. “It affected a lot of people here in the Merrill and Lincoln County area. But we’re here today to celebrate a win for the blue-collar workers here in the state of Wisconsin.”

The payments are calculated based on a formula that takes into account the workers’ wages and average number of hours worked. Kaul said checks went out to workers last week.

“It’s an example of how important it is that our Department of Justice stand up for working families in Wisconsin, and how when it does that, it can get results for working Wisconsinites,” Kaul said.

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Semco Windows and Doors was founded in 1941 and was long a major employer of Merrill, a north central Wisconsin city of around 9,000 people. In a letter to employees at the time of the closure, company president Patrick Semling wrote that he “truly regret(ted) that these actions are necessary” and pledged to help workers find employment. At a job fair in January 2020, some described feeling like their lives had been turned upside-down by the sudden closure.

According to Kramer, some workers chose to retire, but virtually all of those who sought new employment found jobs.

“To this day, I have not heard one that’s not working,” Kramer said.

The former Semco factory is now a site for Sierra Pacific Windows, a manufacturer of similar products.