RUMFORD — Employees who are losing their jobs due to last week’s shutdown of the No. 10 paper machine at NewPage Corp. will soon have a peer support worker to help guide them to training or job searches.

Local 900 Union President Matt Bean said he expected to hear late Thursday or Friday on the status of the worker who will operate under the Central/Western Maine Investment Board. That person will be hired from a pool of previously laid off employees from NewPage.

Funds to hire a peer support worker, as well as to help pay for training and other assistance, is coming from a federal National Emergency Grant of just over $300,000.

Bean said the number of total laid off employees is expected to be between 95 and 100.

Local mill spokeswoman Janet Hall said via cell phone from corporate offices in Miamisburg, Ohio, on Wednesday that the laid off employees will lose their jobs over a period of six to eight weeks.

Executive Director of the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board, Bryant Hoffman, said from his Lewiston office, that his organization will work with the local union to find a peer support worker. He said the funding is provided to the Maine Department of Labor, then his organization carries out the responsibilities attached to it.

He said the Rumford CareerCenter will likely provide space for the peer support worker. Each laid off employee will be asked to fill out a survey describing what their needs are. He said employees from the East Wilton CareerCenter will also help out with the latest round of NewPage layoffs.

Bean said morale is pretty low at the mill now.

“People don’t want to get laid off. All layoffs are of hourly workers and none are salaried. There’s some hard feelings about that,” he said.

When NewPage announced the shutdown of the No. 10 machine, they described the action as “temporarily indefinitely.”

Hall said that when the economy turns around, that machine will come back up.

The No. 11 paper machine was permanently shut down during the winter of 2007-08. At that time, about 850 employees remained.

With the No. 10 machine temporarily shut down, the employee number would be about 750.

The mill announced at the beginning of the year is was cutting production by 150,000 tons systemwide during the first three quarters of the fiscal year. Two mills in Wisconsin were closed during 2008. Rolling layoffs have also been happening on the No. 10, as well as on the remaining two machines.

Other NewPage mills are located in Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan and Minnesota and Nova Scotia.

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