It's the end of an era for a long-standing company in Galesburg. Genie Temp Services, which has been open since the 60's, will close its doors by Monday, leaving about 300 temporary employees in limbo.
Genie has five locations in Illinois. Two already closed in Rock Falls and LaSalle. The three remaining will close next, including two in the QCA, Mount Carroll and Galesburg.
Genie works to place people with around 20 companies. The company says most of those companies will just move to another temp service based in Macomb, and the temp workers will keep their jobs. But some companies are going with a new temp service all together, and that service can decide whether or not to hire Genie employees. Because of that, workers TV6 talked to say the future is uncertain.
Don Howard has been with Genie for about a month, he says he found out the company was shutting down just days ago through other temps.
"I happened to go down there for lunch one day, and they said Genie's was going out of business," he says.
"I was like wow, that leaves a lot of people stumped," Howard says, "I mean, who wants to be without work?"
Reps with Genie would not speak to us on camera, but say only three full-time employees who work at the Galesburg location will be losing their jobs, and it's each individual company's responsibility to tell their temps what's going on, but employees tell us they confronted their company manager today.
"They're like well we don't really know anything yet," Ed Wilder, another temporary employee says, "They haven't called us or gotten a hold of us so they just said you're on hold until we know."
Employees say the sudden closure is another hit to Galesburg, which has seen big companies like Maytag leave in the past, taking jobs with them.
"The actual main place you had to go to find work especially if you need work immediately to leave out of the blue," Howard says, "I'm upset, I'm mad, I'm angry. There really was no reason for things to go the way they did. You decide in one week to shut down a company that employs hundreds of people and leave them in limbo."
