In the wake of the announcement of Oscar Mayer’s closing as part of a restructuring plan, over 1,000 employees will lose their job by the year 2017.

Roughly 250 corporate employees will have the opportunity to move to Chicago where Oscar Mayer will be moving their corporate U.S. meat business.

Given what Madison Mayor, Paul Soglin said in a news conference following Oscar Mayer’s announcement, “The impact on Madison and the metro area has got to be in hundreds of millions of dollars,” Madison College hopes to assist with aiding the manufacturing workforce and most importantly the people who will be losing their jobs.

Many employers have already reached out to Madison College and the Workforce Development Board, indicating their interest in hiring the individuals losing their jobs. Dean for the school of workforce and Economic Development Schauna Rasmussen says, “there is a good job market right now, so it’s hard to tell how many individuals will want to come back to school or need skill retraining.”

The school of Workforce and Economic Development at Madison College is working to meet the needs of both the students and the employers to make sure that there are enough skilled workers to fill all levels of demands around the district.

More specifically as Rasmussen explains, “We partner with our Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin to develop programming that is short term and not on the typical college time line. So we try to offer things in 12 weeks or less and we focus on the high demand fields and we focus on the courses that will get students the entry level skills to get employed really quickly.”

Right now the workforce development board is waiting for feedback from the company, but the board will be taking the lead to finding out what the needs are of the employees. Once they have an idea Madison College will step in and give the individuals the training and support they need when the moment the individuals are ready.

“Once we know more we will be able to plan better but we’re ready for anybody coming from Oscar Mayer, any layoff or anybody that’s under-employed,” says Rasmussen, “we offer courses and try to get people on a career pathway, knowing that likely they can only give up a certain amount of time to come back to school with the hope that they understand that this is do-able for them.”