Workers at Quaker Fabric Corp. leave one of the three informational meetings at B.M.C. Durfee High School yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski Steve Szydlowski

FALL RIVER — With no high school diploma and skills tailored only to the region’s vanishing textile industry, Maria Deforge is not optimistic about her job prospects following news that her employer for the past 32 years, the Quaker Fabric Corp., is likely to close.

In the meantime, Deforge can’t rely on her husband, Paul, to pay the bills. The two met at Quaker, where he has worked as a mechanic for 35 years.

“I’m not skilled to do anything else, and there’s no textiles anymore,” Maria Deforge, 52, said yesterday. “I really have to find a job. We can’t both be unemployed.”

Deforge was one of hundreds of Quaker employees — including a handful of married couples — who crowded into BMC Durfee High School in Fall River yesterday to learn about the fate of their company.

On the first day of its annual summer shutdown last Monday, Quaker announced that it was failing to repay its lenders.

There is “significant uncertainty,” the company said, about whether it could avoid “an orderly liquidation of its business and a sale of its assets.”

The announcement left open the possibility, although remote, that Quaker would be able to restructure its debt, as it has done several times in recent years, including last March.

An acquisition might also forestall the closure of the plant, the announcement suggested.

By late last week, however, Quaker officials had announced no progress in those efforts.

Instead, yesterday’s meetings with many of the company’s 900 employees focused on unemployment assistance and the ability of laid-off workers to obtain health insurance for their families.

At least 62 of those employees live in Rhode Island, according to George Burke, a special projects manager at the state Department of Labor and Training.

“We will all get through the bad place we’re in right now,” Cynthia L. Gordan, Quaker’s vice president and general counsel, told employees at a somber gathering beginning at 9 a.m.

Holding back tears, she pledged to communicate through newsletters, postings on the company’s Web site, www.quakerfabric.com, and in e-mails — an effort modeled on Tulane University’s response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago.

“I know there was no hurricane in Fall River,” Gordan said, “but it feels as if there had been.”

There have been signs for several years that Quaker was failing to overcome the challenge posed by deeply discounted imports from Asian competitors.

That competition has come principally from China, where low wages help keep down manufacturing costs and currency controls have fueled strong export-led growth.

Quaker (QFAB:Nasdaq) recorded net income of $11.56 million in 2002, and it remained profitable the following year. But it did not turn a profit in any of the next three years, generating a total of $65.93 million in losses.

From 2002 to last year, net sales plummeted from $365.44 million to $151.66 million, a 58-percent decline.

That trend has continued this year. In April, Quaker announced a net loss of $5.1 million for the first three months of the year, $1 million higher than its losses in the same period last year. Sales were down $13.7 million.

Investors have apparently lost confidence. The company’s stock, which traded as high as $1.70 last July, closed yesterday at 10 cents per share, down 2 cents or 17 percent.

“The cost structure in China is just incredible,” Gordan said in an interview yesterday. “They can always under-price us.”

For employees, there has been other evidence of Quaker’s decline.

The work force has shrunk from 3,000 employees in 2003 to 900 today, reflecting a drop in shop orders and increasingly low-volume production runs.

But last Monday’s announcement still surprised many Quaker employees, in part because they had survived several rounds of layoffs. Few believed the 62-year-old company would ever completely fold.

“It’s terrible,” said Joe Aguiar, 47, of Fall River, who worked on the maintenance staff at Quaker for 27 years. His wife, Maria, 45, was hired by Quaker 18 years ago.

In addition to their salaries, the two have also lost health insurance coverage for their three children, aged 7, 13 and 17. “We cannot live like this,” Aguiar said. “We have to come up with something.”

In many ways, however, Aguiar has significant advantages over other Quaker employees. He is relatively young, fluent in English and has some training in plumbing, electrical work and welding, he said.

Many of his colleagues speak only Portuguese, and after decades at Quaker their skills are limited to the manufacturing of upholstery fabric for residential furniture.

Some are close to retirement, making it less likely that another employer will invest in training them for a new job. (Although Quaker workers are not unionized, the company based its personnel decisions on seniority.)

“The jobs they have at Quaker don’t provide transferable skills,” said Paula Raposa, executive director of SER-Jobs For Progress, a nonprofit job-training program in Fall River. “Manufacturing jobs are diminishing. It’s a big, big challenge.”

Sandra P. Cameron, of Roger William University, said Quaker employees would be eligible for state-subsidized classes to learn English, earn a high school equivalency degree or train for jobs in information technology, customer service or at a medical office.

Only a week after Quaker announced its probable closure, some employees have begun planning a return to school, while others research minimum-wage jobs at supermarkets. (A veteran weaver at Quaker could earn as much as $15.50 per hour. The minimum wage in Massachusetts is $7.50 per hour; in Rhode Island, it is $7.40, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.)

“It’s not good, but we’ll survive,” said Ana Machado, 46, of Fall River, who plans to pursue a high school degree after 13 years at Quaker. “There have been layoffs before and I haven’t heard anyone died yet.”

But most Quaker employees appeared anxious yesterday, as they gathered documents to apply for 30 weeks of state unemployment payments.

(Additional benefits could become available if Quaker employees are deemed eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance, a federal program that supports U.S. workers hurt by international trade.)

“At my age it’s very tough to find a new job,” said Jose Sousa, 62, a nine-year Quaker employee. “I need insurance. I need to work.”

bgedan@projo.com