I just got a letter saying that I would be receiving a bonus from the company that laid me off earlier this year. The bonus was pro-rated for the 3 months that I officially worked for them. (They locked me out earlier, but I was on the books for 3 months.)
I find this rather odd. Is it a common practice? Did anyone else have this happen to them? I’m not complaining, it is a nice windfall, but I’m just surprised.
Lucky duck. I think I should get a breathing bonus. I also think I should get a bonus for being the Life of the Room, here at work.
I’ve just been notified that I have received 213 shares of company stock valued at £5.60/share. Only I have to remain with the company for three years if I want to keep it (except in case of ‘redundancy’). I’d planned to leave on 1 June and return to NoWA. Hm… $2,300 in stock, or reduced chance of a stress-related health catastrophe and living in my own home?
I’ve never actually received one, but if you were contracted to receive a bonus for work completed they owe it to you. I’ve worked in IT situations where people received them post-mortem.
Sort of. The company I worked for had a standard policy for bonuses every year based on accomplishing “Threshold”, “Target”, and “Stretch” goals with the bonuses for “Target” being better than “Threshold” and “Stretch” being better than “Target”. Since I was laid off partway through the year before the deadlines for the goals they pretended that I had made Target on all goals and then pro-rated the bonus for the number of months I was there this year.
You are lucky all right. That’s a new one on me. Perhaps there’s a union contract involved at some level.
Yes, bonus plans are frequently written this way. It is a fairly employee-friendly way to write the plan, obviously, but not uncommon. In theory, had you known this, it could have motivated you to work hard up until your last day, rather than feel you had no stake in things anymore.
Yes.
I worked for almost 5 years for a multinational company; I started working with the Spanish branch, was forcefully moved to the US central, returned to Spain and finally fired on grounds of “the special project you were in is over, your old job doesn’t exist any more” (mind you, I wouldn’t have wanted it either) “so we don’t know what to do with you”.
There is a yearly bonus that is given out every April, based on general company performance, and I did get mine (official date of firing was something like Dec. 12, so basically I got the whole bonus). Other stuff like compensation for vacation days not taken got paid at the time I got fired, but this had to be paid later because at that time the correct amount wasn’t known. It was already indicated when I got fired, though.
Yes. The large company I worked for last year laid me off in mid-year. Part of the severance package they offered included a token amount as half of the bonus I presumably would have gotten had I worked a full year. As a condition of accepting the severance package I was to sign an agreement that basically said I would take no action against them, that is I would not try to sue them for any kind of discrimination, etc. My lawyer, in a cleverly worded letter, pointed out that (1) I was the oldest employee in the dept. and one of only 2 women, the other being an administrative assistant, and (2) in light of my many years of service, a much larger severance amount would be appropriate. His letter got tossed around between HR and Legal for a while and a larger amount was forthcoming. Not that there were any threats or anything. No, not at all.
Of course, no law that I know of *required * them to provide anything. But they are well known to always do so for involuntary termination that is not “for cause.”
That is how it was at our company too and they seem to have made the same choice. I seem to have gotten full marks on all three categories and then a pro-rated amount.
I did once. I got laid off. I was obviously pissed about it but a few months later, my bank account suddenly had many thousands of dollars extra in it. I figured it was a bank mistake but then I got a check stub from my old company detailing the bonus.
I once started a new job a week before Christmas. On Christmas eve, the other employees got bonuses, and I received a nice gift certificate. A week later, on New Year’s eve, we all got laid off, and the company closed its doors.
This is what happened to me. The contract was “The annual salary is X, which will be divided into 14 portions to be paid monthly, with an additional bonus paid on the 6th and 12th months as a bonus.” Personally, I don’t think it’s so much a bonus as salary that gets paid six months late, but that’s pretty standard practice for Japanese offices. It’s so entrenched, in fact, that many banks and loan companies automatically take it into account when setting up payment schedules.
Anyway, I worked at the company exactly 12 months, and had to argue with them to receive the bonus. They didn’t feel they owed it to me since I wasn’t going to be with company on the day it was to be paid out. I pointed out that I was with the company when the previous year’s bonus was paid, but received nothing because I hadn’t been there during the previous pay period, so whichever way they tried to argue it, they owed me another portion.
Where I work now, this pay system is available as an option (which I declined), but they also pay an actual bonus based on profits for the year. I don’t know about people who are laid off, but people who quit during the year get a pro-rated bonus.
In one case, one guy received a bonus several years after he left. The boss felt that because he had done good work during several really tight years when profits were low, he deserved something when the company recovered later on.
Sigh. “…with an additional portion paid on the 6th and 12th months…”
I used to work at the headquarters of a large Boston area supermarket chain. They had a policy of giving extremely generous severance packages. They were generally 6 months for everyone. I saw two layoffs while I was there and the small groups of people all got 6 months severance. One day, we walked in to find that the company had been acquired and they immediately started working on the waves of final layoffs. There was at least one youngish woman who had only been with the company for a couple of weeks and she got the 6 months pay just like everyone else.
Incidentally, they offered me a new job at the acquiring company that I could have refused and still gotten 6 months severance. Instead, I took it and I didn’t like it much so I quit right about the 6 month mark. It wasn’t one of my financial planning successes.
I lost a job due to downsizing. I worked for a very large and successful magazine that had to be the world’s worst company to work for. And cheapest-name began with T. Also lost a shitload of money when they merged with an internet company and my stock dropped like a rock. Every year our bonus got smaller and smaller and eventually stopped. We knew they were getting rid of our department so I didn’t expect much.
No one believes me but it’s true. The last Christmas I was there, I got - A LOTTER TICKET!!
Cross my heart it’s true! I really think it was from my immediate supervisor who had about 50 people working for him. I think he felt sort of bad and included them in the company Christmas card. I guess it was a nice gesture on his part but I couldn’t stop laughing!
Typical. And they screwed up my pay and withholdings so badly that I couldn’t collect unemployment.
Better: I got a bonus from a company that had fired me. The firing was BS, and though my immediate boss couldn’t stop it, she managed to drag her feet on the paperwork long enough to get me a bonus I had earned.
MizPullin’s company was bought out earlier this year and she was let go (the exact managementspeek was “You no longer have a position, going forward”). She got a retention bonus to stay on for a few months transitioning her job to an off-site location. They had a profit-based end of year bonus and they paid her that (pro-rata) also.
So, bonuses when laid off aren’t unheard of, I guess.
I have a GREAT story about a person who got a really excellent deal, and it kind of warms the cockles of my heart since it was a mature woman who had worked many years as an admin. assistant for a company that usually gives massive bonuses to the top of the heap, and a little that filters down to the workers.
There was a layoff. The rules were these: Everyone laid off got 3 weeks severance pay for every year they had worked, up to one year of severance pay. If you got hired back within 6 months you could get your former pay scale and credit for years worked. So Jane, having worked there 16 years, ended up with a full year’s severance pay. Good so far. Then, a few months later, somebody in another department needed an AA and remembered that Jane was really good, so they hired her. She now has 16 years of experience again, AND the severance pay, AND full time pay as well. But wait – there’s more! A few months later, that department got hit with the layoff axe again, and Jane is among the victims. Guess what? Another year of severance pay!
The people who told me the story said it could not have happened to a better person.