Now all of them face an uncertain future, he added, through an interpreter.

“I am extremely angry,” he said.

The workers have been mounting demonstrations against the company, enlisting the support of prominent local politicians and community advocates. They hope that East West, which is based in Atlanta but runs over a dozen facilities from China to Costa Rica, will concede to their demands of one week of severance pay per year of service.

That may be a tall order, especially since the workers were apparently never guaranteed severance in their contracts. New Jersey is the only state in which companies are required to provide severance for laid-off workers.

The former East West employees worry that their limited unemployment insurance won’t last long enough for them to find new jobs.

“I’m not familiar with how to look for work,” Kam said. “And I don’t have any other work experience in the US.”

That, coupled with his age, makes the prospect of getting hired even more difficult.

The state’s tight labor market is growing at an uneven pace. While the Commonwealth added 4,200 jobs in May, in the same month, the manufacturing sector shed 1,600 jobs. Over 5,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past year, one of the most significant drop-offs of any one sector as tracked by the Massachusetts Department of Economic Research.

And Asian Americans tend to earn slightly less than the median for full-time wage and salary workers in similar production-related roles, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s true of the employees at East West, where workers interviewed by the Globe said that most on the factory floor were paid just over minimum wage.

East West Manufacturing has been assembling electronics components and medical devices in Boston since 2019, when it acquired the facility’s former operator, Boston-based Adcotron. The facility is a vestige of a South Boston Waterfront area that was once lined with factories and industrial warehouses but has since become increasingly populated by offices and biotech lab spaces.

The employees, considered essential workers, helped build hospital ventilators during the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When everyone was sheltering in place, it was really risky to go to work,” said worker Xue Mei Ma, also through an interpreter. “But workers saw that the company needed their help, and people risked their lives and health to come and work for the company.”

Ma, a 55-year-old single mother, said the layoffs — and the company’s intransigence with even those few workers who do speak English — had left them feeling “betrayed.”

“We never asked for anything, we never got recognized by the company,” she said. “We don’t even get paid that much. … After all of these years of service for the company, hearing this news like this made us all really disappointed.”

The workforce at East West is not unionized. But their plight has attracted the attention of several advocacy groups, including the Chinese Progressive Association, which organized several rallies against the closure in the weeks before the layoffs took effect.

“It’s not like some small mom-and-pop store, closing their shop because there’s no business,” said Karen Chen, the organization’s executive director. “That’s not the situation with this plant. This company has lots of resources. It’s whether or not they choose to spend it on the workers.”

East West Manufacturing did not return multiple requests for comment. A representative for BDT & MSD Partners — the private equity firm that acquired an undisclosed stake of East West in 2022 — declined to comment.

The layoffs have also attracted attention from city officials, including City Councilor Ed Flynn, whose district includes the South Boston manufacturing plant.

“One week of severance is not a lot to ask for,” Flynn said. “Providing someone with a couple of references to a potential job [or] employment opportunity is not a lot to ask for.”

Flynn, along with At-large Councilor Henry Santana, co-sponsored a symbolic resolution in support of the workers that the council passed unanimously on June 12.

Given that the company operated in a building owned by the Boston Planning & Development Agency, Flynn said he’d requested that city officials review the situation.

“This company has been a bad neighbor, and I’m embarrassed that they’re operating in a city-owned building,” he said.

He added, though, that the layoffs are not a political issue, but a moral one.

“It’s about how we treat workers and how we can disregard workers, especially immigrant workers, when they’re not needed,” Flynn said. “That is not right, that is not acceptable, And that’s not what this country is about.”

Chen said that her group has been in contact with city officials about opportunities for vocational training for the laid-off workers. She added, though, that it’s hard to say how useful that will be “at their older age.”

“I think the reality of it is, even if the resources are available, will the workers be able to take advantage of it? That’s a big question,” she said.

Chen acknowledged that chances are “pretty slim” that East West accepts their demands of its own accord.

“I’m hoping that elected officials and the public calling on the company will move them,” she said.

Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @fonseca_esq and Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.