Martha Griffin planned to buy a home on Ellis Street before she lost her job at King Mill. She has not been rehired, and she recently learned the house is under contract to someone else. JONATHAN ERNST/STAFF

She lost her receptionist job and benefits when King Mill closed without notice.

She lost the house she planned to buy when the plant shut down a week before she was to close on the property.

And, before she could get her belongings in storage and move in with her mother, she was evicted from the house she was living in.

But that wasn't the end.

Last week, Ms. Griffin and other former employees received their 401(k) plan and trust statement for 2000 and 2001 and discovered that Spartan International, King Mill's parent company, had not contributed the 50 percent match promised.

Ms. Griffin, 43, a 12-year employee of King Mill, put $912.14 in the plan in 2000. Spartan contributed $15.32, shorting her $440.75. This year, before the plant shut down, she contributed $293.85. Spartan contributed nothing.

According to Ms. Griffin, the lawyer representing the former employees, John B. Long, said it was illegal for Spartan not to contribute the money.

Augusta lawyer Jim Overstreet said that in order to be a qualifying 401(k) plan, the company must by law deposit the money it agreed to deposit.

''If he's not required by law to do it, then he was just required to do it by contract, therefore the company has breached its contract with the employees,'' Mr. Overstreet said. ''Whether or not they've actually broken the law, I don't know the answer to.''

Augusta tax attorney Bill Hammond said that if he were a former King Mill employee he would call the Department of Labor and report that the matching contribution was not made.

The employees also could contact the plan's trustee and ask what they had done to collect the contributions. He said he would write the employer and make a claim, reminding Spartan of the terms and asking whether the contribution will be made.

But they still might not get anything, Mr. Hammond said.

''If they're belly-up, they're belly-up, and the secured creditors are going to come ahead of the others, and that's just going to be the end of it, and you're just going to be out your benefit,'' he said.

Mr. Hammond said it is possible the plan had been amended to eliminate the matching contribution, but if so the employees should have been notified.

Former King Mill employee Donna Hughes said the employees had not been notified of any changes. Her 401(k) statement shows Spartan contributed $3.15 to her plan in 2000 and nothing in 2001.

Mrs. Hughes contacted a lawyer who told her it wouldn't be worthwhile to try to get the money.

''He said there was federal law protecting it if it was in writing when we signed up for our 401(k) how much they were going to contribute,'' she said. ''It was in writing, but since it's so little involved it would cost us more in litigation than what we were owed.''

Ms. Griffin and other former King Mill employees have taken the company to court to try to continue their health-insurance benefits for 60 days by filing a petition to force Spartan International into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in hopes of equitable distribution of any assets left.

But South Carolina U.S. District Court Judge Margaret B. Seymour found the employees in contempt of her order appointing a receiver to oversee the disposition of Spartan's assets. The employees were forced to withdraw the petition or face fines and jail time.

The employees won a small victory when U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge John S. Dalis refused to dismiss their petition, and the employees have appealed Judge Seymour's order to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

Ms. Griffin is one of 1,200 employees who lost their jobs when Spartan abruptly closed five mills in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina on May 4 and went into receivership.

Companies with 100 or more employees are required by federal law to give 60 days' notice of plans to close.

Mrs. Hughes said she cannot understand how Spartan owner Walter S. Montgomery could own another company and not be forced to make the promised contributions.

And she calls Judge Seymour's rulings shameful.

''For the courts to say the other creditors, the companies that make millions a year, that their debt is more important than our debt, is shameful,'' she said.

''I just don't understand that we can have so many laws that are supposed to protect us, but yet these laws are getting walked all over. Nobody is protecting the little person who's hurting the most.''

Meanwhile, Ms. Griffin has moved into her mother's living room. Her 16-year-old daughter is sharing her mother's bedroom, and her 19-year-old daughter is being farmed out to friends and her father.

Ms. Griffin still had hopes of buying the house on Ellis Street when she found a permanent, full-time job - until Monday night.

''The real estate agent called and said somebody else has a contract on it, and it appears they have the financing to buy it,'' she said.

The mill's closing has hurt her family emotionally, physically and financially, she said.

''There have been too many losses for us resulting from this one loss,'' she said. ''The loss of my job, loss of insurance and other benefits, loss of income, loss of routine, peace of mind and a definite loss of security.''

Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228 or sylviaco@augustachronicle.com.