My wife's company tried to screw its employees, so they torpedoed the company right back.

The BBQ Pit
1

My wife’s company used to be a small mom-n-pop outfit with a great corporate culture, and employees that considered each other to be family. Great bunch of people, and the managers and VPs were no different. Over 30 or so years, it became the largest company of its kind in the world, and still had a close-knit, wonderful culture about it. The turnover rate was low, you had the seasoned veterans sticking around because they were being treated well, etc.

About 5 years ago, the company was bought out by an investment company in California, who then bought another, related company in Utah, and merged the two. Since then, life has been hell. Constant layoffs. Constant “streamlining” consisting of draconian cutbacks to keep the company in ready-to-sell condition. This past Spring, the company, in order to keep it from looking like a debt on the bottom line, confiscated all accumulated vacation time for all employees.

You can imagine the discontent. Employees started dropping out like flies. All those coding experts and seasoned veterans began deserting the ship. The brain drain was incredible.

Then the other shoe dropped. This company, which was started and thrived in Huntsville, Alabama, and had expanded to St. Louis and several other cities, including a number of international offices, was being gutted. All offices except the one in Provo, Utah, were being closed. All employees, including all the developers, coders, sys admins, client care specialists, dedicated project managers who were solely responsible for the large clients such as New York City, Los Angeles County, and others, had 60 days to move to Utah, or lose their jobs.

Internal scuttlebutt, which I heard directly from a VP, said that the corporate masters were counting on at least 50% of the employees to knuckle under and make the move.

After all, why would anyone want to live in a hellhole like Huntsville or St. Louis when beautiful Provo, with its tolerant, accepting LDS culture, beckoned?

Besides, times are tough, right? The serfs will move anywhere we tell 'em, and like it, right?

Almost to a person, the employees, without unionization of any kind, other than a certain esprit de corps, told the company to fuck the fuck off. Out of several hundred employees, there are less than 10 that are making the move.

Take that, you motherfuckers. You want to know about brain drain? Try to support your proprietary language now, since not a single developer is moving, and have all, in fact, found new jobs. Know why you got the shaft, you idiots? Because NOBODY TRUSTS YOU. You’ve fucked your employees over so much by now that nobody believes for a second that they’ll have a job in 6 months, even if they move.

So suck it, chumps. I hope the entire company flatlines and costs you billions.

2

If you want some folks to boycott the @$$holes, you should drop some (more) clues.

3

Good for them, and I hope those who didn’t go form a competitor and kick the asses of these clowns.

However, I thought unused vacation time belonged to employees, and was carried on the books. I can see forcing employees to take it, or paying it off, but I’d strongly suspect just confiscating it is against some law or other.

4

You would THINK that wouldnt you. But I know a person who worked for a company that was recently bought out (and I am sure its not the company in the OP). One thing the employees were told was that accrued vacation time would NOT be honored.

Floored my simpled minded legal mind, but thats the story I got.

And yeah, don’t just burn that bridge, nuke that fracker from orbit :slight_smile:

5

Ogre’s from Alabama, which is, I expect, a right to work & at-will employment state. I doubt there’s a legal requirement there that the company provide any vacation; it’s more likely that businesses do it for competitive reasons. A weak employment market gives the unethical license to screw their employees.

6

This reminds me of what happened years ago when Computer Associates took over Ingres Corporation. They gave employees a take-it-or-leave contract with a one-sided non-competition clause. Almost every single engineer quit on the day when the contract was supposed to be signed. In that case, though, the economy was in good shape, so the ex-employees were able to find other jobs easily. It really takes guts to do this when unemployment is around 10% nationally.

7

You might be surprised. I had the IL Dept. of Labor tell me that although there is no legal requirement for employers to provide paid leave time in IL, if they do provide it, they either have to let employees use it, or pay it out. (I asked because my practice group left my old firm when I was 2 weeks short of the one year I supposedly needed to work before I could use accrued vacation time.)

Luckily my old employer paid me for the full 2 weeks without a fight, but the IL DOL told me they were legally required to do so anyway.

8

I totally know what company you are talking about.

9

Yeah, I expect that a few Dopers do.

10

Yep, I used to work for one of these very same firms. “Mom and pop” investment firm, choice skyscraper downtown in a beautiful city, Xmas bonuses (regardless of stock price), catered meetings. The bosses even turned a blind eye to cracking open beers while working late on a Friday. They were also very progressive hiring-- very gay/alternative friendly.

A megacorp bought them, started replacing execs with their own people, and cracked down on anything that wasn’t suit 'n tie corporate. They then announced that the whole outfit was moving to Lynchburg VA.

To quote one of the gay black men I worked with: “A brother of my persuasion moving to someplace called Lynchburg? Fuck that!”

Most rapidly quit, fewer than 10% of the folks moved. I agree, it is a very dismal and soul-sucking atmosphere to work in. Especially awful are the hand-over-heart assurances during the buyout of how much Megacorp respects and loves your tradition and experience, how nothing will change, how they’ll build a better future, blahdeeblah…

11

So clue the rest of us in.

12

If you guys don’t mind, I’d like to keep the specifics out of the thread. The fallout is not complete yet. I should have known Dopers would be quick on the scent. :slight_smile:

13

They can say anything they want, tell the most outrageous lies, because they figure their employees are too battered to protest. Call it a refuge in audacity.

Someone needs to check with the state’s employment department and an independent lawyer before giving up.

14

Wrote out a long reply then saw Ogre’s request so I deleted it. Suffice to say, this is the kind of company that a community hates to lose. Lots of good, high-paying jobs. I used to be in this industry until three years ago, when I left before something like this happened to me. A rapidly consolidating industry.

15

I have a guess at which company this is, but I assume that Ogre had a reason why he didn’t name the company unless he says otherwise.

16

This is my understanding as well. Our company tried to cap accrued vacation time last year; multiple employees (in several different states) told them that they thought it was against the law and they had to back down after checking with the DL in several states. They had to pay it out or leave it on the books since it counted as compensation for time already worked but they were allowed to change the policy going forward. I don’t think that they can be forced to provide vacation time benefits but they can’t take away the benefits for time already worked.

17

SirsiDynix, right?

18

A question.

Can a specialty software company even SURVIVE a 95 percent attrition rate? I can imagine some businesses surviving (but not thriving) this kind of loss, but not a company like this.

And what are the 5 percent staying thinking? Now you’ve moved, virtually nobody knows what the hell they are doing, and you still have your asshole overlords breathing down your neck screaming “make IT WORK”. Gahhhhhh to the nth power.

Sure sounds to me like the investors investment just blew away with the wind…

19

Yep. Ah well. I shouldn’t have started the thread if I didn’t want it in the open. No real harm done, though.

20

There have been a number of companies that discovered, too late, that the workers are not nearly as cowed as they “should” be.

I know of two companies that did similar things, only to suffer for it.

In one, the move was (somewhat) logical and the employees might have simply suffered through it, but the brass decided that it would “look better” if they got one of the more arrogant IT consulting firms to handle it. When the clueless MBAs arrived and began announcing decisions, they were met with a solid wall of simple, direct answers. “Does this report show X?” “Yep.” (No reference to the fact that X is only 15% of the information needed to keep this line in operation.) At last report, the moved division was in serious failure with only the top brass, (the only ones who actually made the move), in trouble.

In the other, the same sort of nonsense about “They’ll have to move” was assumed by the company. The division was being moved from Cleveland to the Carolinas and “everyone knew” that all the employees would be happy. Of course, they never looked at their demographics to realize that the Southern town was a single industry location, so there was no place for all the spouses who were working to find employment and that the majority of middle managers and line foremen had kids in high school who were not going to be happy having to move or kids in Ohio colleges that would either have to trandfer and lose credits or stay and pay out-of-state fees. And, frankly, Cleveland’s cost of living was at about the same place as the southern town, so people were going to have moving expenses without actually getting a better paycheck. The only people who actually moved were a few young kids and a couple of almost-retired folks who had already been looking at the Carolinas. The company has never quite recovered from their brilliant move over ten years ago.