Chicago Heights Gerresheimer plant closes after laying off 172 workers

That's how the union described it. So the company that we're talking about here is Gerresheimer. And the union said that this was designed to reward people for their loyalty if they stayed for the last three months, ended up fulfilling those orders, and then they would be given a retention bonus. But very important to note here is that it was tied to a production benchmark or a goal where if they met that benchmark, they would get paid that retention bonus. But the workers were telling me that the management ended up getting in the way of the process, and they said the goals were simply unattainable and they were set up for failure. So what kind of money are we talking about here? Well, for the unskilled workers, they were promised a retention bonus of $9,000. And for the skilled workers, it was $15,000. So a significant amount of money that these people were depending on here. So once again, it was if they stayed for the last three months of operations, the catch was that they had to hit a 50% pack-to-melt production target. In other words, it is a percentage of raw materials put into a glass furnace that turns into what they sold, which was glass packaging for pharmaceutical companies. So earlier today, I spoke with Ron Glenn and Gregory Barksdale, who worked for a combined total of 40 years for Gerresheimer. They said they were far ahead of that goal at first, but then computers and machines went offline, which ended up tracking those production goals. They said the company then told them they missed their production marks by six-tenths of a percentage point. So the company ended up closing two days earlier than the workers expected, and they told the workers that they do not qualify for that retention bonus. The incentive is that the production manager gets his bonus based on numbers of the bottles that go into the lehr, which is a process that cools the bottle down. And so they basically don't care what their quality is on the other side. That's why I say they incentivized failure. My mom worked there for 48 years. That job raised me, and then it raised mine, so it raised a few generations. But you know it is what it is. God opens some doors, closed some doors to open others, so that's how I look at it. You can tell that there were significant family ties to this company for generations for some of the workers there. But I did reach out to Gerresheimer to get their perspective and get their reaction about what they saw with this retention bonus of why these workers did not get that money. I'm still waiting to hear back here, but I did also speak to the United Steel workers. They told me that they plan on fighting this and they want to get their workers paid here. So certainly we're going to have more tonight at 9 o'clock. We are live in Chicago Heights tonight. Brett Boganski, Fox Chicago.