Chillicothe — Long-term former employees should be getting some compensation from the sale of the Pixelle property as the former paper mill transitions into a medical glove factory.
The ‘paper mill response team’ held their weekly meeting on Tuesday afternoon, October 14th, 2025 – but changing course from worrying about the future of the mill to learning about its new future – as U.S. Medical Glove Company / U.S. Paper Mill Company gets set up.
One aspect was to invite a representative of mill workers in the meeting, where they discussed a $5.5M fund established by the sale from Pixelle / H.I.G. to benefit their laid-off workers.
Todd Fannon is an officer in U.S. Steelworkers Local 731. His union represents the workers of the Chillicothe site, the main mill. (The Chilpaco side has its own union, Local 988.) The union’s president spoke at the April 18th rally.
In last Friday’s news conference at the mill, where U.S. Medical Glove Company’s purchase of the entire mill site was celebrated, U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno announced that former owner Pixelle / H.I.G. Capital had deposited the money to help people most affected by the closure of Pixelle.
Moreno said “it will benefit the people who are most affected by the closure of this facility. The local stakeholders – meaning county commissioners, economic development organizations, the mayor and city council – will work on how to disperse this money.”
That was a big concern for the task force: to set up a committee or board to administer the funds – and decide who gets them. Moreno had said the first million-dollar disbursement will go out sometime in January, and the intent was to benefit long-term mill workers.
A non-binding agreement had been made in June between mill operator Pixelle and the state’s economic development corporation JobsOhio that included a provision for employees, who would soon be in the process of being laid off: “All proceeds from the sale of the property will be used by JobsOhio and the State of Ohio for the benefit of the former employees of the Paper Mill and the greater Chillicothe community, to include hosting job fairs, transitional and skills training, and other services for former Pixelle employees.”
Union officer Fannon said everything about the fund and disbursement is very preliminary. The task force mentioned that Senator Moreno had explained: of the $5.5M, $1M will be disbursed after the end of 2025 – and the remaining $4.5M with interest will be disbursed in five years. That was established in the sale contract of the property.
But otherwise, it has yet to be defined. The task force discussed needing three to five people to be on a committee or nonprofit organization, which will close out after the fund is empty. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office offered to assist, which the team said will help make sure that state law is followed.
Fannon said that U.S. Steelworkers wanted a contact person on the panel, and had met the day before to discuss the fund.
The team said that long-term employees were the focus of the fund – possibly employed for five years and more, which Fannon said was the initial thought of Senator Moreno. He also said Moreno wants as much to go to employees as possible, and to keep the overhead low and the process simple.
He pointed out that if five years of employment is the lower limit, then of the 830 employees as of April 15th, only about 312 would benefit.
Hear Fannon explain how his union members are doing after being laid off in a side story and in the below video interview, and learn more in the story on the task force discussion.
