TECUMSEH (AP) -- Officials with MBA Poultry, Tecumseh's largest employer, haven't given up on getting the nearly 300 employees left without a job back to work quickly.

MBA unexpectedly closed Friday, sending 290 workers into the weekend with an uncertain future.

"Right now it's big trouble for everybody's family," said Luis Villandon, an MBA employee for about seven months. "It was supposed to be sure to have a job here, but now I don't know."

MBA President Mark Haskins said company officials were going back to Heller Financial of Chicago, which has provided much of the funding for the plant, to negotiate.

Haksins hoped to have more information today, when an employee meeting was scheduled.

The closing is the end result of problems that began in the plant's startup phase when plastic wheels and stainless steel bearings failed to carry birds along production lines.

The production line was a key to processing MBA's "Smart Chicken" line that air-chilled the birds to storage temperature.

Other processors cleaned carcasses in chilled water, putting them at risk for cross-contamination from salmonella and other bacteria, Haskins said.

Haskins said workers installed 20,000 replacement wheels over the Thanksgiving holiday in 1998, but MBA was already damaged.

"We're just now starting to have the sales that we projected 12 months ago," Haskins said. MBA has been processing 40,000 chickens a day from six growing houses and producers in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.