LEWISTON — More than a dozen displaced workers from the just-closed RC & Sons Paving Co. met with Maine Department of Labor workers Wednesday.

They wanted help finding new jobs, and they wanted answers.

“What do you do?” asked Laura St. Pierre of Turner, whose fiance, Kevin Bachelder, worked there for four years. “We have a mortgage. We have kids. Money is owed.”

Bachelder and other workers were told a week ago that the company would close for a day.

“There was no work,” Bachelder said. But workers were told they could pick up their paychecks at noon. “We were all there at noon. Then, they told us to come back at 3. ‘We’ll have your paychecks.'”

At 3 p.m., owner Mike Cloutier came out.

“He said, ‘There is no money. We’re closed,'” Bachelder said. “We were dumbfounded.”

The Sun Journal was unsuccessful in its attempts Wednesday to reach Cloutier. Calls to the company at 942 Main St. in Lewiston went unanswered.

Workers said they lost not only last week’s wages but had earned a check for this week, too. Several workers said they also were concerned about money that was supposed to be deducted from previous paychecks and designated for 401(k) retirement accounts.

The issue was scheduled as part of a long list of questions to be answered by workers from the Labor Department, which opened the Lewiston CareerCenter late Wednesday to meet with workers.

Mark Fox of Buckfield, who worked on a grinding crew for the company, said he had been back to work for only five weeks after a layoff when the shutdown occurred.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, he said.

Summer is routinely the company’s busy time, when employees work longer hours and tally overtime pay, he said. In most years, the money made now helps many families get through the winters.

Instead, Fox went home Friday without the money he earned. He filed online for unemployment.

“I got the ball rolling,” he said. “Now, I’ve got to find another job.”

The company had been operating since 1976.

dhartill@sunjournal.com