Potential for layoff and strategy help requested: mandatory unpaid time off

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Like companies everywhere, my company has been scheduling layoffs every quarter. My strategy to these events is to learn some new software on my own, paying off as many bills as possible, and to avoid taking vacation days. The hope is that in the event of my possible layoff, my bills won’t be looming, and I can get paid out for my vacation days I didn’t use, and have an extra skill in my pocket.

The monkeywrench in my plan is this morning’s email annoucing this quarter’s layoffs also annouces that some people will be ordered to take 5-10 mandatory UNPAID days off. Now I’m just filled with questions, and telling me to go and ask HR is a joke. (the last time I needed to talk to HR the meeting was resheduled 6 times, one of those times because HR was a no show to the meeting) So tell me what’s been typical of other companies out there, since HR will be of no help.

Forcing me to leave for 2 weeks unpaid isn’t going to save them much money, and I somehow doubt that they’ll ding the executives on this one. What kind of employee is typically made to take this time off?

If I decide to use vacation days during my (possible) mandatory furlough, can they legally refuse me that option? or is it a ploy to do just that, make us use our vacation days?

Do we stop accruing days during the mandatory furlough?

If forced to take unpaid, are we still paying into our insurance plans, and if not are we still covered? ditto for wageworks?

2

My company is doing this, too, for one week. I posted a thread on it, as a matter of fact. We are allowed to use vacation/PTO time if we have it, or we can take the days unpaid. As far as I am aware, everyone in the company is doing this.

My husband just took some accounting classes for his MBA, and he says that getting our unused vacation time off the books makes the books look better because that vacation time is seen as a debt to the employees. So, yes, it is a ploy to get us to use up our vacation time. I am using mine. We are not required to use our vacation days, though–you can take the time unpaid if you wish.

We were told that we would still accrue days during the furlough. No one asked about the insurance in our meeting, though. I’m surprised that didn’t come up. I believe May is a three-paycheck month, so it might not be much of an issue. Insurance would be paid with the first two checks.

I’d be very surprised if your company does this and doesn’t have some sort of meeting about it so you can ask HR folks questions. Ours was at least able to do that much for us.

Good luck. There are many of us in the same boat.