Laid off from O-I Glass.

What O-I Glass layoffs have meant for employees

Some of O-I's partial cuts have come with words that sound temporary. Its 2023 Oregon letter called the Portland layoff indefinite, said the company didn't yet know whether it would be permanent and expected it to last at least six months, and the plant had in recent years often laid workers off and closed temporarily, NW Labor Press reported. The same paper reported that O-I was also indefinitely suspending a furnace in Los Angeles in 2025. If an O-I plant has you on an indefinite layoff, it's worth weighing how long you can wait on a recall against other work, knowing that Portland's indefinite layoff of 2023 was followed by the end of production there in 2025, as Owens-Brockway's closing letter to Oregon set out.

At Streator, O-I planned to serve existing customers from its other domestic plants, Packaging Dive reported. Moving to another plant is a separate matter, and one the union contract puts a price on. If you're covered by the United Steelworkers' agreement with Owens-Brockway for its P&M and AMD units and you move to another plant because of a plant or department closing, the union's 2025 contract summary lists a $5,000 relocation allowance, grossed up. The same summary sets pension for those hired before April 1, 2011 as a monthly amount for each year of credited service, $68 to $72 depending on labor grade and year, and company 401(k) contributions of 4.25% to 5.25% of pay, by years of service, for later hires. That agreement runs to March 31, 2028, the date O-I's 2025 annual report gives for its principal US and Canada contract, and union contracts covered about 72% of its US and Canadian operations employees as 2025 ended. If a move to another O-I plant is on the table and that agreement covers you, the allowance is a figure to set against what relocating would really cost you.

Fit to Win has reached office jobs as well as furnaces. O-I's 10-K for 2025 says the company finalized plans that year to eliminate a number of selling, general and administrative positions in the Americas, and the program booked $88 million in 2025 to corporate and other costs outside both regions. As O-I moved to idle its Perrysburg innovation center in 2024, Ohio's job agency said it hadn't received a WARN notice from the company, Packaging Dive reported. If you're outside a bargaining unit at an O-I plant that's closing, it's worth knowing that the same 2025 Portland letter left bumping rights for represented employees to their bargaining agreements and gave unrepresented employees none.

Most of O-I's European employees are represented by workers' councils, which its 10-K says must approve changes in conditions of employment, including staff changes, and O-I lists that approval among the things that may slow its restructuring there. Europe also carried $245 million of the program's 2025 charges, against $112 million in the Americas. If you work for O-I in Europe and a workers' council represents you, a cut at your plant needs that council's approval, by O-I's own account.

O-I's US layoff notices have gone out mostly under the Owens-Brockway Glass Container name and, in four filings in our WARN tracker, under Owens-Illinois, the company's name before what its 2024 annual report calls the Corporate Modernization. At Waco, O-I told the Baylor Lariat it had discussed transitional support from the company and from Texas state agencies with workers and union officials. If your O-I job was in California, Illinois, Oregon or Texas, the four states its recent notices came from, filing details are on California unemployment benefits, Illinois unemployment benefits, Oregon unemployment benefits and Texas unemployment benefits.

A sourced history of O-I Glass layoffs

• 2025, plant closings in France, Germany and the Netherlands

  In France, a social plan agreed with unions set 340 job cuts, 164 of them from closing the Vergèze plant that supplies Perrier. About 100 jobs were to go at Bernsdorf, Germany, and 215 with a Maastricht plant's closing in the Netherlands, Eurofound records.

• July 2025, Portland, Oregon production closing

  Owens-Brockway told Oregon it was permanently closing production at its Portland bottle plant, with about 90 layoffs from August 5 while keeping a warehouse at the site, its WARN letter said.

• October 2024, Streator, Illinois factory closing

  Owens-Brockway announced the closing of its Streator factory, part of the town for more than 140 years, with layoffs for 152 employees from on or after November 18, Shaw Local reported; a 2022 furnace shutdown had already cut the workforce from 320 to 160.

• October 2024, Perrysburg innovation center and Americas severance program

  O-I was idling its Perrysburg, Ohio innovation center, a combined research and pilot plant opened in 2013, and approved a severance program tied to cost-cutting, mostly in the Americas, with an expected $21 million charge, Packaging Dive reported.

• September 2024, four furnace closings approved

  O-I approved closing four furnaces, including a single-furnace plant in its Americas segment, affecting about 200 employees, Packaging Dive reported from the company's September 4 filing.

• September 2023, Waco, Texas plant closing

  O-I's Waco plant, open since 1944, was set to stop production October 16 and close in December, the Baylor Lariat reported, and its 300 employees included 90 laid off earlier that year after a February 2021 storm damaged a furnace.

• June 2023, Portland, Oregon indefinite layoff

  Owens-Brockway told Oregon it would indefinitely lay off about 81 employees at its Portland bottle plant from about July 21, blaming an unexpected slowdown in the local wine market, its WARN letter said.

What to do if you're laid off from O-I Glass

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. O-I Glass's biggest hubs: California, Illinois, Oregon, Texas. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what O-I Glass's hub states run: California, Illinois, Oregon, Texas, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.