Laid off from Lamb Weston.

What Lamb Weston layoffs have meant for employees

Connell's workers heard their plant was closing as part of a quarterly earnings announcement, released to them and to the public moments after the city itself learned of it, and Lamb Weston had stopped processing potatoes there the day before, the Tri-City Herald reported in a story republished by PotatoPro. The workers were encouraged to consider posts at other regional Lamb Weston facilities, the Herald reported, and the community organized job fairs and other help. The crews came from across the region, with about two-thirds living in or near Connell and the rest likely commuting from the Tri-Cities, Othello and Moses Lake, Connell's mayor estimated in the Spokesman-Review. If another Lamb Weston plant has a place for you, the drive from home belongs in the comparison alongside the pay.

Restaurant demand is the backdrop Lamb Weston has described for its U.S. cuts. In 2020 a spokeswoman said restaurant closures in the pandemic had cut demand, so the company didn't need all its plants to meet it, Potato Business reported. In 2024 chief executive Tom Werner said in the first-quarter release that restaurant traffic and frozen potato demand were soft relative to supply and expected them to stay soft through the rest of fiscal 2025, and he described the plant being closed as an older, higher-cost facility. When it announced the 2025 cut, its July 2025 results again described soft restaurant traffic in the U.S. and UK and a competitive market in which Lamb Weston gave customers price and trade support. In 2026 the stated reasons were efficiency and fit, with the Munro plan tied to profitability and operational efficiency in a January release and Broekhuizenvorst's to shifting market conditions in a June release.

The companywide cuts read differently from a plant closing. The 2024 release tied that plan's headcount savings to commercial and support functions and listed employee severance among its charges, and the 2025 share counted some unfilled positions, so part of it was jobs nobody held. The 2024 plan also temporarily curtailed some production lines and schedules across Lamb Weston's North American plants, so the Connell closing wasn't the only change on plant floors that year. If one of these cuts took your job at the Eagle headquarters or another Idaho site, where more than 1,000 Lamb Weston employees worked in July 2025 by state labor figures the Idaho Statesman cited, the claim process for Idaho is on Idaho unemployment benefits. If Lamb Weston has offered you severance, it can help to read up on negotiating a severance agreement.

Plant use is a thread in how Lamb Weston has explained two of its closings. The 2024 release said closing Connell and curtailing lines would help it better manage its factory utilization, and Lamb Weston's October 2026 results said ending production at Broekhuizenvorst and transitioning customer fulfillment within its network had balanced its network utilization. Both statements came in quarterly results, as did the 2024 and 2025 headcount cuts, so if you're at a Lamb Weston plant or office, results days are worth marking.

For the 2020 shutdowns, Washington's Employment Security Department planned outreach to the furloughed workers through its rapid response team and WorkSource, Potato Business reported. For a job that ended at a Lamb Weston plant in Washington, where the company employed about 3,000 in the Mid-Columbia in July 2025, the state's claim process is on Washington unemployment benefits. A whole-plant closing like Connell's fits in one plain sentence to the next employer, and explaining a layoff has examples of how to put it.