This happened to one of my brothers, maybe 35 years ago. He was working as a delivery driver for a furniture manufacturer. They called all the drivers together at the start of one day, and told them the company wasn’t doing well and they didn’t have enough work to keep all the drivers busy. (This wasn’t a surprise to the drivers, apparently.) So they were going to cut six drivers, but were going to ‘let the drivers pick who stayed.’
The method? They announced a new rate they’d be paying drivers, something like 20% less than they were paying. Those who were willing to work for that, could come up and sign new papers and stay on. If not enough drivers took the deal, they’d raise the rate offer by something like 50 cents per hour in ten minutes. And again by the same amount in another ten minutes, and so on until they got the number of drivers they wanted.
You’d like to think worker solidarity kicked in, and the drivers held out to get the old pay, but in fact Jim said there was a lot of talk and arguing and defiant shouting…and they had all the drivers they needed within 30 minutes. Yes, including him. He had a mortgage, wife, and two young kids.
BTW, the company closed down completely in less than a year, And their rate of damaged shipments went through the roof.
I was part of an inverse situation. I was working at a dot-com startup in the late 90s and management was nervous because the venture capitalists providing our funding had come out to the office. As expected, there was a suddenly announced, just before lunch, mandatory all-hands in the conference room. We anxiously awaited the news that some or all of us were about to be unemployed.
The CEO came out. “As you may be aware, we have been struggling with sales and cash flow. The VCs aren’t happy with the direction of the company, and have decided to replace me. Your new CEO will be so-and-so. Good-bye!” Then he left, and we all went to lunch.
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My first job out of college was at at aerospace company. I started about a year before the Berlin Wall came down ending the Cold War and triggering a massive collapse of the industry. A middle manager who was very nervously explaining the upcoming “reduction-in-force” lashed out at our group of concerned recent grads. “What are you worried about?!? You don’t make enough to be worth laying off!!!” Umm… thanks, I guess.
I worked for a company that decided that to avoid bankruptcy (note: didn’t work) to fire everyone with over two years with the company (below managers of course) because they got paid the most. Of course they wanted to keep it secret from everyone below Senior Executive Staff ™ until 5pm Friday but I knew through my contacts what was coming. Late Friday, the managers (still in the dark) were called in, told who they were letting go and then released to fire us err… lay us off. When my manager came in and told me I could use 15 minutes of on-the-clock time to pack my stuff, I said, “Naw I’m good. I took all my stuff home two days ago.” and dropped my keys (already off my chain) on the desk.
He asked how did I know this was coming? Remember, HE didn’t know until 30 minutes previous.
And when they need to hire people again, this guy is going to start whining about why no one wants to work for him.
Here is a good way: When I worked for Sun, a project got canceled and they had to lay off a lot of people. But they had a job fair where managers with openings could interview the people at risk and transfer them. I got a really great person for my team that way. But they did it the call people into rooms for other layoffs, so they were not perfect.
I used to be a transport manager in a medium-sized manufacturing company with 500 or so employees.
Everyone knew that volumes were dropping so it was no surprise when They said that they were looking for voluntary redundancies. Employees with long service were not eligible as they were entitled to a bigger payout than newer ones. There were not many applicants.
Then they picked off the low hanging fruit. The old guy who kept the grounds clean, the drinks trolley ladies. They contracted out the canteen, cleaning and maintenance services.
Six months later I was asked to nominate three people from my staff of twenty. This was not too difficult as there were a couple I had wanted to axe for a long time, and I picked a young guy with no family for number three. Elsewhere in the company, we lost quite a few office staff, R & D people and some assembly workers. It wasn’t enough and it wasn’t long after that that my name came to the top and they contracted out the whole transport operation.
I was ‘let go’ from my next job after six months (Sorry, but you don’t seem to fit in here) and ten years later from my job in the NS after yet another reorganisation.
My last corporate job had me showing up to work on my first day and the regional VP held an all hands meeting where he announced that 30% layoffs were coming but he didn’t know when.
The job was a shit show including a manager who decided that I, despite being the senior engineer on staff, shouldn’t help my coworkers with their workload or take any projects for myself so I sat in my office playing games for 3 months. That manager also hired at least two more engineers for my department all without telling them layoffs were coming.
When the day finally came 6 months after they announced the layoff I danced down the halls when they called my name to meet with my manager and took my 3 month severance. There, from what I could tell, they used the last hired first fired philosophy and all three of us who had been hired since the announcement were let go. One person had received a 3 month sign on bonus, worked for a month, then received a 3 month severance and had a job a week later with the firm that hadn’t even closed the position she’d been applying for with them when she’d come to work with me.
Once upon a time… Everyone in the department (maybe 100 people) knew they were making decisions about the department and being laid off was possible.
On the big day everyone in the department went to the floor with the conference rooms. People had a list of who should go in what room and steered us to the correct room.
Room 1 was told that it was business as usual.
Room 2 was told they needed to relocate to another state or be laid off.
Room 3 (mine) was told we were being laid off - we had 6 months left.
But, for me this was a good thing. A couple hours later they called me and said that they had a different position for me. That was the beginning of my current career.
Ditto but it was more than a decade and my first job out of the navy. I would quip that the end of the cold war was good for the world in general but pretty devastating for me, personally. It was more than a decade before my hourly wage was back up to that job’s, not counting inflation.
Also, I’ve looked up the three HF direction-finding stations I worked at – gone, all gone. Two have been repurposed, the one in the middle of a National Park not being a surprise, and one has vanished, presumably sold back to the local farmers.
I’ve been to that meeting. I was a manager, and was aware of who was being laid off before the meeting. One of my direct reports started to panic as we were herded into the room of people who weren’t losing their jobs. I admit, I told him that he was going to the right meeting.
Once, I was given notice (but not immediately fired, I had a couple of months) and one of my direct reports was also given notice. But she was on vacation when it happened. This was an HR&senior manager layoff, so I wasn’t allowed to tell her anything. She got back from vacation, and emailed me asking how I was and what was new in the office. I didn’t reply at all. Not even “welcome back”. She guessed from this that she’d been laid off and I wasn’t allowed to tell her, and later thanked me for it.
I’m curious about that, too. Before a Big Boss jumps down the chain and starts swinging the axe, what talks have they had with the managers in between about, “Your department’s production sucks. Fix that.” I have seen situations where the oompa loompas and their bosses had entrenched themselves into nonfunctional practices where the workers had no meaningful direction because their leaders had been failed up from among them. Nobody involved had ever seen a functioning version of their department so they didn’t even know what to strive for. In a case like that I can see hacking off the entire branch and hiring new managers who in turn assemble and train their own teams.
I was laid off once. It went something like, “We’re shutting this office down in no sooner than 4 years. Get a different position and relocate, or get your resume in order…again, you only have at least 4 years.” Hard to complain about that one.
I am of the belief that a layoff without notice is evidence of weak leadership. If you’re afraid of disloyal employees sabotaging the operation, then you’re already in the business of disgruntling people. If you didn’t know before yesterday that you needed to lay people off, then you’re crap at running a business.
Me too, sort of. We weren’t told why the five people - all department heads - who hadn’t joined our meeting hadn’t, but soon found out that they’d been brought to another room while we’d met on another topic, told our educational assessment contract with state X had not been renewed, and their services were no longer required.
Current shitty story happening in my neck of the woods (not to me but to someone I know): This person has been in charge of the ceramics program at a college for the last 20 years give or take; every year in August or so they would give her the paperwork for her next contract.
But of course, things have been screwed up by Covid so she didn’t necessarily stress when the paperwork wasn’t presented in as timely a fashion as usual.
Until she got a course catalogue and it identified someone else as holding her job.
I don’t think not giving notice is necessarily due to fear of sabotage. First, it stops work for nearly everyone while you wait for the ax to fall. Second, good people who won’t get laid off my be nervous and quit before the layoff happens.
I suspect managers also don’t want nearly all of their reports coming to them with sob stories.
I’ve been through lots of layoffs - never got hit, but did some planning - and almost always if you are aware of what is going on you’ll know one is coming.
Before the AT&T trivestiture I spent a lot of time making up lists of expendable people. It turned out that the voluntary leaving package was so good that 1/3 of my center left at once, including me. The only person who got laid off was someone who we were about to fire anyway - he did much better getting laid off.
You didn’t say if this person is faculty or classified,
but hopefully she’s part of a union that will fight the administration for her.
Locally there was a Dell computer call center operating in town that opened ~20 years ago. This is a small and fairly economically depressed town so when the call center opened everyone was thrilled: people were making good money and had benefits. A lot of people bought houses, opened IRA’s, took out car and RV loans, and in general were enjoying a somewhat normal middle-class lifestyle for the first time in their lives.
The call center had been open for five years or so by August of 2007 when on a random Thursday morning right before Thanksgiving everyone was called together – about 200 employees – and were informed that the call center was closing, everyone was out of a job, and they all had to leave the building – they had something like 5 minutes to gather their things and get out. It was around 10am and it was “funny hat day” or wear your pajamas to work day" or something like that… it was completely sudden and nobody had any inkling it was coming.
That day and through the weekend people came to the now-closed building and graffiti’d the front, tossed Dell hardware all over the sidewalk, and generally spent a weekend committing mild vandalism. The local PD kept a cruiser and a couple of officers in the parking lot to deter any would-be major destruction but they did nothing to stop the smaller stuff – they were pretty much in support of the vandals. It’s a small community and the closing of the call center had a very big impact.
Even now very, very few people locally will buy a Dell product. My wife bought a Dell laptop at the beginning of the pandemic and she got a trainload of shit for it from quite a few people. Personally I will not buy a Dell product, ever. Local memories run strong and deep.
My ex had the George Clooney Up In The Air job. Fly around the country firing people. She didn’t mind it. Said they all deserved it. We are divorced now. Suppose I should have seen that coming.