Owens-Illinois to offer buyouts to 400 salaried workers

[TexasTowelie]

Glass bottle-maker Owens-Illinois Inc. said Wednesday that it is offering buyouts to some salaried workforce as part of its ongoing effort to streamline its business.

The Perrysburg-based manufacturer of bottles and other glass packaging said its voluntary separation program will be offered to a limited group of approximately 400 salaried employees in the U.S. as the company continues “to transform our business, improve our competitiveness and pursue growth opportunities.”

Leslie Orozco, an O-I spokesman, said the 400 workers being offered the buyouts represent less than 8 percent of the company’s U.S. work force.

But she added: “Frankly, we have no idea how many people will take this offer.”

Read more: https://www.toledoblade.com/business/development/2019/04/10/owens-illinois-offer-buyouts-400-salaried-workers-glass-bottles/stories/20190410147

[watoos]

1. I worked for Brockway Glass

OI's big competitor. Our CEO sold us out to OI, big shots in Brockway Glass, those who had a lot of stock made a killing. I helped build the huge bottle making machines so I got to travel all over the country and world installing them. OI's top management sucks. We had the best bottle making machine in the world, then one day an OI exec walks into our machine shop and declares, if it isn't broke, break it. The OI engineers had designed a totally new machine that worked oh so well on a computer. They had us install 1 section to test it in Brockway, Pa. Did I mention that Brockway workers ran circles around most OI workers. Our Brockway workers made it run, but it was obvious to us that the new machine was a piece of shit. OI never asked our advice, the people who built the machines, before they designed a new one. We started to swap out machines in factories across the country. We who build machines suggested numerous issues, numerous fixes. OI listened to us then. The machine was still a piece of shit compared to our old machine. It was obvious to all of us that we needed to stop installing these pieces of shit, the problem was, OI had us throw out all of our old machine parts and mechanisms.

OI finally realized that it had fucked up. It started using machines from another competitor, Emhart. Did I mention that OI's top management sucks?

OI used to have great incentives for people to go salary, especially the health care. OI even carried the good health care insurance over into retirement. That came to a screeching halt. I just heard 2 days ago that salaried OI employees were paying 2k/month with a 10k deductible.

I get a pension from OI so I wish them well in their new endeavor of cutting costs.

By the way, if our CEO had not sold us out to OI, Brockway Glass would have blown OI out of the water. It was #1 and we were #2 and we were gaining on them.