Buy Lance Snacks

It can be hard to believe, but every once in a while a corporation does the right thing.

According to CNN, in the middle of December, the Archway bakery in Ashland, Ohio was suddenly closed by the private equity firm that owned it. 300 workers lost their jobs just a few weeks before Christmas. That's the unsurprising bad news.

The good news is that Lance Snacks, which makes vending machine snacks like peanut butter crackers and Cream Cheese and Chives on Captain's Wafers (all too often my lunch in college consisted of various Lance crackers, especially the CC&CoCW) bought the bakery at an auction and have already reopened it. They hired back 60 of the workers, and hope to hire the rest by the end of 2009.

Not only did they reopen the bakery and rehire some of the workers, they also gave all 300 of the former employees a $1,500 gift card.

David Singer, CEO of Lance, says the gift cards were a way of letting Ashland know the new owners are different. "We wouldn't do it willy-nilly," Singer says. "We do want to make money. But this is the pool of folks that we intend to hire. We just wanted to let them know who we were."

The 60 workers rehired so far are earning their previous salary and retained their seniority. They also were provided health insurance from day one.

It seems it is possible to treat workers with respect.

Hat tip to Don Lindich