Would You Delay ER on a Rumor?

[misty57]

Your plan is solid and makes sense.

-You are financially prepared for retirement

-You have no issue with remaining on the job for a finite period to determine if some form of severance package is available

-Your plan is to take the first offer that comes along....after all for someone who plans to retire this is just icing on the cake

-You are considering the tax implications.

You will be successful. Just cast your mind to those in middle management who are not financially prepared or who labor under some ill conceived notion that they work for an employer who values service and seniority. Not many of those left.

Trust me, we think about employees who cannot retire all the time. The current pension plan is less than stellar. DH will receive between 25-30% of his current gross (after over 30 years of service) and a pretty penny of that will go to our share of retiree medical premiums. The ONLY REASON he is able to retire is that he maxed out his 401k for decades - not necessarily for retirement, but because the match made it a good investment.

I assume that many older, retirement eligible employees did not realize that they would need a healthy 401k for retirement until a decade or two after it had been offered (after on-line sites were developed by the company so that you could do pension estimates). Couple that with the higher cost of health care and the fact that home values have been decimated and it does not make for a very pretty picture.

 

[misty57]

It will be interesting to see what news, if any, comes from the executive VP this week since the CEO kind of let the "cat out of the bag" last week despite her constant denials.

 

[brett]

My guess is that if they have crunched the numbers and decided on a strategy, then they will engage HR and move forward. No point in delaying the reorganization.

They will want to realize any cost savings as quickly as possible and rumors will only serve to distract employees and hurt morale. At the end of the day this is about moving forward.

 

[TromboneAl]

To follow up (since I think it makes for an interesting story), it turned out that there were 2 of us in that situation -- although we were in different groups but both worked for the same manager. She was a group leader and I was a programmer.

I told him in April. In late May the head honcho in HR called me in to verify that my manager's story about me volunterring was accurate. It was. Cautioned me to not say anything to others. He denied any knowledge of an upcoming layoff, just said, "Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Even if it is/is-not, that can change."
Meanwhile, my tasks were winding down and they didn't assign me to any long-term tasks, only short-term ones.
For Louise, it was interesting. They slowly moved the people under her to other group leaders, until she was a leader with no direct reports. Pretty obvious in her case that something's going on!

It wasn't until late August that the layoffs came. The announcement came one morning -- all the managers read the same letter to their people at the same time. Next morning the group leaders came around one-by-one and brought people to the HR conference rooms where they got the personal news.
I was one of the few that was grinning ear-to-ear and urging the HR guy to stop apologizing about laying me off and to hurry up and get to the good stuff -- the golden handshake package.

Everybody's last day of work was the Friday before Labor Day holiday. You don't get holiday pay unless you are on the payroll the day BEFORE and the day AFTER. So they screwed us out of one day's pay.

What was the package?