Sen. John Kerry speaks with Mary Jo Couto, of Fall River, who worked at Quaker Fabrics for 12 years before losing her job along with 900 others.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski Steve Szydlowski

FALL RIVER — The annual summer shutdown at Quaker Fabric Corp. ended yesterday, but the manufacturing floor remained empty and the machinery that has churned out upholstery for six decades sat idle in the Fall River mill.

The only employees who made it past the gate quickly gathered their personal belongings and left.

Normally, machine operator Mary Jo Couto, 63, would have reported for duty at 3 p.m., producing yarn until 11 as she has for the past 12 years. Instead, she filed into the Fall River Career Center to have her reading and math skills tested, hoping for training that will lead to another job.

“I loved my Quaker. In my mind, I can’t believe it happened,” said Couto, who moved to Fall River from the Azores in 1968. “I’m alone and I have to pay the mortgage, water and insurance. It’s not easy.”

Couto was one of 900 tradesmen recently laid off by Quaker, which announced on July 2 that it had failed to make interest payments to its lenders.

The company — a former titan in the textile industry that employed 3,000 — owes $34.2 million to at least four lenders, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It has said there is “significant uncertainty” about whether it will resume operations.

That news came on the first day of the annual two-week shutdown. Yesterday, many Quaker employees were still in disbelief as they rushed to submit applications for unemployment insurance and crowded into seminars about state-subsidized health care, hosted at the Fall River campus of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Under the so-called Medical Security Program, Massachusetts offers unemployed residents a subsidy toward their employer-based insurance plan, if it remains available, or toward an individual plan administered by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts.

The 62 Rhode Island residents who worked at Quaker will receive Massachusetts unemployment payments, but they are ineligible for health care, according to George Burke, special projects manager for the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. “We don’t have a similar program,” he said.

Since July 9, when Quaker encouraged its employees to find another job, workers have flooded the Fall River Career Center.

Some days, more than 500 have deluged the facility, exceeding the crowds in 2003 when Main Street Textiles laid off 400 employees and Teleflex Medical moved is production operations to Mexico.

“This is twice that, if not more,” said Joseph Viana, the center’s director of operations. “These are people who have been at Quaker the longest. They’re older and they may have language issues. It’s a very tough group.”

Quaker has not declared bankruptcy, and there is a possibility the company could restructure its debt or attract a buyer who would recall its employees.

The chances of that, however, appear increasingly small.

In halting operations on July 2, the company also dismissed four top executives: James A. Dulude, vice president of manufacturing; Thomas Muzekari, vice president of sales; and Michael E. Costa, the principal accounting officer.

(The remaining officers are president and chief executive officer Larry A. Liebenow; Paul J. Kelly, vice president of finance; Duncan Whitehead, vice president of research and development; M. Beatrice Spires, vice president of merchandising and design; and Cynthia L. Gordan, vice president and general counsel.)

Muzekari learned of the company’s financial trouble at the same time as Quaker’s vacationing manufacturing workforce. He was told to inform his 18 employees, including salesmen.

“It was horrible. Everyone was in shock,” Muzekari said. “I knew we were struggling, but I didn’t know we were closing the door.”

In a brief interview yesterday, Gordan declined to comment on any attempts to rescue Quaker, founded in 1945. “The company is doing everything it can to help our workforce deal with this very difficult situation,” she said.

Some workers have already applied to English language classes or turned to Roger Williams University for state-subsidized courses that lead to a high school equivalency degree or a potential job in information technology, customer service or at a hospital or nursing home.

Touring the Fall River Career Center yesterday, U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry said more than 70 percent of the workers would receive training. The Quaker employees, he said, might eventually find jobs in the state’s burgeoning high-tech sector.

“I’m going to get my GED and hopefully get a better job,” said Quaker supervisor Paul Rego, 39, of Fall River, referring to a high school equivalency degree.

But many other employees are less confident, after working decades at Quaker as the region’s textile industry slowly collapsed.

Couto, who earned $11.15 an hour at Quaker, said she is willing to clean houses at a significantly lower salary. Some of her former colleagues have been applying for positions as supermarket cashiers, though the minimum wage in Massachusetts —$7.50 per hour — is less than half of what experienced Quaker employees earned.

James Calkins, who oversees the Fall River Career Center, said it is unlikely that most of the displaced workers will find jobs before the Massachusetts unemployment payments end in less than eight months.

“The economy isn’t going to absorb that many,” he said.

Hoping to extend those benefits, Quaker has asked the U.S. Department of Labor to give ex-employees access to Trade Adjustment Assistance, a federal program that aids U.S. workers hurt by international trade.

In an application submitted last Tuesday, the company blamed its financial troubles on inexpensive imports from China. Department of Labor investigators are trying to determine if imports have caused a decline in sales or a drop in production.

Quaker has won that designation at least twice before, in January and April 2005, after previous rounds of layoffs, according to Department of Labor records.

Last Thursday, Kerry asked Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao to approve Quaker’s most recent request, arguing that the company has “fallen victim to intense foreign competition.”

Yesterday, he criticized U.S. trade policy, saying lax labor and environmental laws abroad have allowed competitors to manufacture cheaper goods. “It’s important to have a trade policy that’s fair,” he said.

Trade Adjustment Assistance offers up to two years of unemployment payments, job training, English language education, employment advice, as well as a job search allowance and money to help an unemployed worker obtain a new position.

The Department of Labor typically takes a month to evaluate an application. In the meantime, the Fall River Career Center is organizing a special job fair at Bristol Community College for Quaker employees.

“It’s a big deal when something like this happens,” Kerry said. “It has a profound impact on a community.”

bgedan@projo.com