Mutual aid fund for Chicago X-dock

At Protolabs Network, 2025 has already been a turbulent year for our organization. Nobody has been hit harder by this than our colleagues in Chicago’s X-dock team, which includes employees who work in shipping, quality assurance and other hands-on specialties, most of whom had been with the company for years.

The X-dock team was a crucial link in our order process, using their experience to ensure that the orders Protolabs Network fulfilled were of sound quality. All of us in Chicago can attest that they frequently went above and beyond to ensure that our customers were happy, and consequently, that we were happy as well.

As part of the larger Protolabs organization's 2025 plans to promote future growth, the entire X-dock team is being laid off effective May 16 2025, and their duties have been transferred to teams in Minneapolis.

Our colleagues in X-dock are already working hard to prepare for the next phase of their careers, but many of them are left without a stable income or any support, even as they work to ensure a stable transfer of operations in their final days with the company. On top of that, the U.S is poised to have an unstable supply chain throughout the country, making future employment prospects more turbulent than ever.

In view of this, we, the remaining employees of the Protolabs Network’s Chicago office, have come together to create this GoFund me, and help ease the strain on coworkers who have gone the extra mile for us so many times. We are trying to live the values which we’ve always championed in our mission statement: 'We are kind', 'We are ONE team'"