Comment by tandr
19 hours ago
"1/4 of workforce was offered buyouts" does not mean all 60000 will accept them. "Results may vary", you know.
I saw it happening in a funny way not long time ago - company offered buyouts, but got insanely surprised when high percentage of people actually accepted it. Management thought acceptance rate would be much, much lower, but when numbers started to pour in on a 2nd day, oh man... Panic spread very quickly because people were accepting packages in fear of layoffs without such package, so management said if any layoffs will happen in 3 years period after this, same package will be offered no question asked. Cooled things a bit, but what a mess...
> management said if any layoffs will happen in 3 years period after this, same package will be offered no question asked.
And people believed them?!
Failing to live up to a business promise runs afoul of promissory estoppel: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/promissory_estoppel.asp
There is plenty of room for uncertainty where promissory estoppel and right-to-work laws intersect.
If this claim was in writing then it's legally binding in most U.S. states. Technically it's legally binding even if it's not written but in those cases it's harder to prove.
Right? When management demonstrates their inability to plan for repercussions, how am I to believe a pinky promise covering the next three years?
> And people believed them?!
Probably because they could sue them for not keeping their word.
It was more than 3 years ago, but as far as I know, they did honor the agreement. Some people took early retirement packages closer to the end of that three-year period and they got the same deal.
30% was the quoted number for the acceptance rate of the earlier VRP, which was mostly long tenured employees who were at retirement age, or close to it. I would be surprised if this gets a significant acceptance from the younger employees. OTOH, older employees who didn't accept the earlier VRP and were regretting that decision may jump at this offer.
So if we get the same acceptance rate. This would be about a 10% reduction in headcount.
Was this Shaw?
Hi David. Yep, it was.
>so management said if any layoffs will happen in 3 years period after this, same package will be offered no question asked. Cooled things a bit, but what a mess...
Unless those funds were placed in an escrow account, I would have assumed that claim held no water.
Because the company wouldn't have the money by that point? Seems unlikely. Or because it was an outright lie? Could be grounds for a lawsuit.
Also just from raw corporate penny pinching. Why would they make payouts like that if they're not forced to, yes there's reputational risks of making that promise and then not following through with it but faced with a choice between that and a few lawsuits (with the usual corporate advantages of arbitration clauses and vastly more resources they're likely to win too) a corporation looking to shed people is likely to take the win of reducing their severance payouts.
1 reply →
> Could be grounds for a lawsuit.
And?
Litigation is a rich man's game. Companies almost always have more resources to dedicate to litigation than individual employees, especially if those individual employees have been laid off and are now without an income.
The company knows this, the employees know this, the company knows the employees know this, and vice-versa.
2 replies →
A promise like that just isn't binding, things can change in 2 years, the managers themselves may have moved and been replaced with different people. A bird in the hand is worth many birds three years from now.
1 reply →
hey! we said no questions asked!