Walker insisted that 15% of the sale proceeds be reserved for employees, even though they owned no stock, making the condition nonnegotiable for any buyer. Eaton ultimately agreed, with a spokesperson later saying the purchase “honors their commitments to both their employees and the community.” The bonuses, which began rolling out in mid‑2025, don’t all vest at once, though.
To ensure employees collect every dollar, Walker structured the deal so they would have to stay on the job for five more years, turning the windfall into one of the largest—and stickiest—retention packages in recent memory. The Fibrebond surprise echoes a broader pattern of founders cutting employees into big exits, a trend that goes some way toward countering the increasingly extreme CEO pay gaps that persist in the 21st century.
Without the condition requiring staff to stay, Walker believed the factory would have emptied out immediately. “I don’t think we’d have many employees on day two,” Walker told the Journal. He wanted to ensure a smooth transition to Eaton, protecting the business that had been the economic engine of Minden, a small city of roughly 12,000 people.
When envelopes detailing the surprise payouts landed, reactions on the factory floor ranged from disbelief to tears, with some workers initially assuming it was a prank or a camera trick. Longtime employee Lesia Key, who started at Fibrebond in 1995 at $5.35 an hour, told the Journal that she used her bonus to pay off her mortgage and open a clothing boutique after years of living paycheck to paycheck. Others cleared credit-card balances, paid college tuition, or boosted retirement savings, even as many were startled to see taxes claim close to a third of their checks and to realize that quitting early would mean walking away from hundreds of thousands of dollars.
However, the five-year requirement did spark some friction. A few employees “grumbled” that the annual payout structure made it difficult to quit if they wished, and others were surprised by the heavy tax burden that claimed nearly a third of their checks. Walker carved out a crucial exception to the five-year rule: Employees over 65 were exempt.
Fibrebond’s Walker framed the payout as a thank‑you to employees who stuck with the company through a devastating 1998 factory fire, mass layoffs during the dotcom bust, and years of frozen salaries before a bet on data center infrastructure sent sales soaring. He told the Journal he was pleased with the deal that he struck: “Close to a quarter-billion dollars in employees’ hands felt fair.”
