U.S. Army Ends Backpack Contract With New Bedford Factory

About 50 workers and their family members held signs and chanted outside of the U.S. Army Soldier Center in Natick on Wednesday.

“Save our jobs!” they shouted.

The workers — many of them immigrants from Portugal, Cape Verde and Latin America — are scared about a future without the factory.

Maria Perez has worked at Eagle Industries for one year. “350 families!,” she said in Spanish, referring to the number of people who would be affected by a shut-down. “What are they going to do, with the recession the way it is? They have bills and mortgages to pay.”