The company that I work for told us this week that they are downsizing and out sourcing IT. Won't know if I'm one of the jobless until April.

Think it's a bad time to ask them if they want to sponsor a race car?

it's never a bad time. who knows, if you do good enough, it could be an alternate source of income for them and you.

Well, it's good they gave everyone some advance notice, but it's kind of a pain to have to play the waiting game too...

Good luck with it! Hopefully everything will work out for the best for you either way.

We seem to be in that waiting game mode once or twice per year now, and another big layoff was just announced, but with no details (again). It's starting to get old. Good luck!

Best of luck to you!

Hope things work out for ya!

Hope you get to keep the job. Good luck.

Good luck Bill. At least they gave you a chance to keep your ear to the ground for another job just in case. Hopefully you'll get to keep the job and get to run with us this year!

If they lay you off its a perfect time to get a job that pays better. Thats what I've been told many times, many people only get a decent raise when they change positions. Good luck either way!

are you willing to work a bit more north ?
send me a copy of your CV.

You see it all the time these days. Company's complain about a lack of emplyee loyalty all the while sending jobs overseas. I have 2 sons, one graduated from college in 2003 with a degree in accounting, the other will graduate in a year. I swear, I believe they would have been better off learning a trade. I've worked for the same company for 32 years, but we have the layoff, selling out, paycut, retirement reduction rumors all the time. I hope it all works out for you.

I work for a company that fires at least 5% of its salaried workforce every year. Its a matrix organization so you have about 6 different people who think they are your boss. All it takes is one negative comment from one of those 6 people and your gone.

To make things worse, I'm sandwiched between managment like that and union labor that could care less about the company.

I fully expect to get laid off sometime between 4th qtr '06 and 2nd qtr '07, since changes in government regulation will likely cause revenues to spiral down the toliet.

You have to think of any professional position these days as temp work.

Good luck, hopefully, you will have found a position by the time I'm collecting unemployment.

No loyalty among theives. All the CEOs are crooks nowadays. steal from the poor and give to themselves. It's pretty pathetic. The only real reason why most people stuck with their jobs was the pension plan, but now they are gone. And of course you know that the reason why they gave you so much time to know they are going to lay people off is because they want as many people to jump ship early so they don't have to give as many people severance packages. Of course this means the company will probably lose the best employees instead of the ones they could do without. Companies treat people just like machines, they see them as replaceable. They don't seem to understand it takes a couple of years of training before they have a clue what they are doing (at least in my type of position).

That sucks. Hopefully, you won't get laid off but if it does happen, good luck on a nice severance package.


And people say unions are outdated/not thinking in the best interests of the members anymore...

-Fully funded pension
-Annuity
-BC/BS health/dental/vision continues after retirement at no charge

I'll stick with my Union.

-IBEW Local 134 Apprentice

Howdy,

And what will you do when the company you work for folds up shop because they can't afford to pay the rate?

You know, like about a billion other companies have been forced to do.

Ask GM about their retiree benefits. That seems to be going well. :-)

Mark

Retiree benifits shouldn't be cancelled, even if you have to pay something towards it out of your pension. My dad needed a pacemaker less than a month after he retired, the total bill came out to over 25 grand! We would have been paying that off for over 5 years without his benefits.

Without benefits I would be too worried about saving for future doctor's bills to spend any money. That alone would make me sick. Enough people like that would make the economy even worse.

Go down to the Union hall, sign in, and see if there are any "Calls", if so, take it and go to work. The benefits are handled by the Local, not the contractor. The contractor figures the rate into his bid and pays the Local accordingly. If they don't pay the benefits on time, eventually the Local will declare that they can't use Union labor and they can't continue the work, so it's either a win-win or a lose-lose situation. Also, there are hundreds of contractors, so we don't have a "workers vs. big business" problem.

IBEW/NECA = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers & National Electrical Contractors Association.

As far as comparing to GM & UAW, I haven't been following it too closely in the last month, so I can't comment. It does piss me off that the government will allow GM to take away retirement benefits, but if they don't GM could fold, yadda yadda. That doesn't piss me off as much as IBM doing away with their pension for extra cash flow, giving the employees a 401k option, then wanting to give the executives an additional 401k option on top of that. Corporate America is really screwed up.

Sorry for the hijack, Bill.

Have him check Ernst and Young it he hasn't yet. Pay is decent, good benefits, flexible work arrangements. I've been working with them for 8 years and am pretty satisfied with the way they treat us. Let me know if he applies I can get a $2,500 bonus if he is hired I'll split it half.

Thanks, and I'll pass it on. He works for an auditing firm in DC right now, and HATES it. When he went to college, I suggested he major in education, because he seems a natural for it. Other's told him the money was in business, finance, accounting etc, and that's what he did. My opinion about a trade stems from the shrinking number of young people pursuing those jobs. And there will always be a need. No matter what the industry, it always starts out with a guy, (or gal), with a shovel, hammer, 'dozer, etc. If he pursues, (and gets), the job, we'll keep the bonus between us!

Wow Bill, I hope there is no bad news in your future.

On a side note: The company my wife works for recently outsourced a website programming job to a company in India. With all the trouble they have gone through up to know her boss told her that the saving was not worth all the touble they went through.