The ransom came due. First Brands Group LLC, parent of Jasper Rubber Products, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of Texas after running out of road and credibility. The automotive parts conglomerate, already up to its neck in debt, has secured a $1.1 billion debtor-in-possession package, with $500 million approved to keep the machinery turning while lawyers and lenders divvy the carcass.
The spin is familiar: “stabilising operations”, “supporting employees”, “continuing partnerships”. But anyone who’s followed Jasper’s shakedown tactics and safety squalor knows the truth. This isn’t strategic restructuring, it’s a collapse dressed as continuity. When you build your empire on extortionate price hikes, worker neglect, and air thick enough to chew, the books will always come calling.
The tragedy is that the honest workers – the ones who’ve kept those moulding lines alive through heat, dust, and injury – will carry the pain while the executives rewrite their résumés. They didn’t cause the greed that hollowed the company; they just clocked in and endured it. Now their livelihoods hang on the same court filings that protect the suits.
Jasper Rubber, a Cummins supplier in that toxic Indiana loop, sits squarely inside the wreckage, proving again that greed and gravity are undefeated.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project