Maybe next time the employees should just be permanently laid off and leave it up to the new employer to hire. This might get me into deep water, but I worked for a company where the union decided to "flex" it muscles and the empty building is a stark reminder of what can happen when common sense is out weighed by an "we are in control" mentality. I was lucky, I was over 55 and was a production supervisor so was staff. As such I qualified for a reduced pension. There are guys that were making $25 and hour plus benefits which brought the all in total to $42 and hour, that are now working for $12 to $14 an hour with very few benefits.