Severance & Stay On Bonus

During July 2001 our mfg. facility was closed & all employees laid off. We received at the time a letter which said they were going to exit the fabricated strainer business. A group of key employees got together to start a new business offering the same products as our former employer was offering but decided to exit. With permisson from our division president we got permission to take off company property equipment & office desk, chairs etc. (which we agreed to purchase after the closing of the facilty to pay a reasonable rate) when the parent company found out we were going to open a new business we were terminated and have not received our severence pkgs. Our facilty was closed on a Friday and they announced on the following Monday they had purchased a facilty making the same products in the same part of town. They did not offer anyone a transfer (I had 25 yrs with the company) we did not start our new business till we received the letter from the PRESIDENT stating they were exiting the business we were going into.

My pkg is over $28K for severance & I was offer a Stay on Bonus of $21K - the Stay On Bonus was based on my worked till the end of Dec. 01 which when I was fired I could not complete. I believe this was a inapproxiate act by my former employer. Our former employer is a 5 billon dollar company.