Why would you keep her if she did not perform requested work, no matter how profitable the company is?
When I’ve had employees who refused to do requested work, s/he would be counseled (“some areas are overwhelmed and we’re a team”, speech along with “do you need additional training?”), then counseled/reprimanded (“we’ve discussed the need to do x,y, and z before. I haven’t seen any improvement, so here’s an outline of expectations and we’ll talk in 90 days”). Paper trail. And then if no improvement, she would have been terminated.
But no matter what you call it, firing, layoff, whatever. It still sucks. Glad it went as well as these things can.
I said “pensions etc” the etc was meant to include things like extra vacation time and other benefits typically accrued over time. That and the OP said they were “older” which lead me to think that soon-to-be retirement - and therefore pensions - was a consideration.
The OP also made it sound like the reason they were paid more was because they’ve been working there longer. That alone is enough for Zeke’s implications.
I personally make no judgment on the employer, but I do at least see the implication. I have known places that fire the workers who have been their the longest because they are paid the most. But I also know plenty of places where there are older people who do less work and refuse to learn new software that wind up getting canned. It’s common practice to keep those people around when you are doing well but lay them off when you aren’t. People like to stick with the workers they know if they can.
The latter situation happened at my sister’s job. They started by letting the woman do part time work, but eventually had to let her go.
I will admit it sucks that you can’t tell them why they were let go over others, though. I still wonder if that woman my sister works with knows why she was let go. I bet she thinks it’s age discrimination.
I was a civilian Federal employee for 26 years. Twice the commands where I worked did a RIF (Reduction-In-Force) for reasons way above my paygrade. Each time, very VERY talented younger employees were let go because employees with tenure got priority that weighed more heavily than their performance.
Sometimes, folks who have been around a long time are real assets. Sometimes, they’re just coasting on seniority. Sometimes, the problem is a supervisor who can’t be bothered to counsel a poor performer and document everything. In 26 years, I personally knew only 1 engineer fired, and even he was kept on way too long.
All other things being equal, seniority is a trump card, but when the old guy who refuses to use the computer is kept on while the younger guy who works his ass off gets let go, seniority has little value. And I say this as a senior engineer who retired during the last RIF in the hopes that one of the younger engineers would be kept. FIFO sucks.
And it sucks in a number of ways - I worked for a while as a contractor for a union shop - they really, really wanted to bring me on as an employee, but I would have had to join the union. Which meant that my pay would be scaled off seniority and I’d be subject to seniority RIFs. Plus, part of my salary would go to union dues to maintain this precious state of affairs. In other words, its hard to get a talented person to join an organization if they are going to be treated based off something other than talent.
Not really, one can not even assume a pension as a benefit any more. Many comapanies no longer offer pensions of any kind, employees must plan their own retirement via 401k or other option. In any case, if the RIF had been OK’d by the lawyers (and I think Foxy said they were), then my assumption is that pension savings weren’t the main reason.
You do realize that unions (and seniority, to some extent) also protect workers, right? Not every organization, and especially not every manager, base things purely on talent. I’ve been RIFed, and I was chosen not on talent, but because the other guy’s dad played golf with the boss. This is a fact–all parties admitted it. I was more talented, I had more seniority, but I was under an at will work arrangement. If it were a union shop, I wouldn’t have been the one that was RIFed, and I wouldn’t have had to find a new job.
Ideally, yes, but its a bad deal for talented people who work in in demand fields - FairyChatMom was an engineer and I’m an IT Project Manager. Because if our management treats us poorly, we can go somewhere else. As a talented person, you probably got laid off, and ended up in a job you liked better, maybe even paid more, with less douchey management.
It can also be a bad deal for the workforce at a company as a whole. I have a friend who managed to unionize his shop - got everyone a raise (yeah!) that was eaten - and then some - by union dues (boo!) and the cost difference in giving everyone a raise meant that they were undercut on the next bid cycle (government contracts) and the company closed down - so everyone needed a new job. You add overhead to the cost structure when you insert a union, that might be good or might not be good for the individuals (since dues come out of their salaries) - its unlikely to be good for the company. If the company is in a highly competitive field, that won’t be good for the employees if it isn’t good for the company.
I did get laid off, and hired in a better position at a better company, in the field that I actually have my degree in. (I was in a similar field.) I have to deal with union stuff every day–I’m in a mid-level supervisory position–and it’s a friggin headache. I’m not in the union, but my underlings are. (Well the underlings of my underlings…)
It just irks me when people dismiss unions as 100% evil, which is what I interpreted your statements as.
