Closing of Anchor would affect more than city

The sun beats on the blue tin building and gleams off the mounds of broken glass just inside a fence across the street.

But inside the walls of Anchor Glass, the atmosphere is a bit different.

Employees shaken from news of Anchor Glass Container Corp.'s Chapter 11 filing wonder if this one will be the final straw. Rumors fly about whether the plant will stay or go.

Many of the plant's 350 employees were around for the company's last Chapter 11 filing in 2001, but they don't remember it like this.

"It didn't appear to be as devastating," said Don Crum, vice president of the Glass Molders, Pottery and Plastic (GMP) Allied Workers Local 157 Union. "The wolf's at the door right now, more so than we've ever seen."

Crum, a 37-year employee, said work inside Plant No. 6 went unchanged in 1996 and 2001 when the company went through reorganization from their previous filings.

But since the bankruptcy protection filing on Aug. 8, employees have lost the little things that kept their days from becoming a blur.

Awards for years of service and the dinners that went with them are gone. They no longer get popsicles while they work -- a temporary means of relief from the stifling furnace heat.

But those things are trivial, compared to the 350 jobs on the line.