Bev, Wow! It has been my experience that one week per year of service is 'customary' for a severance package. It surely would have been a great deal easier with a month per year of service!! Owens sounds like [it was] a company from the 'Old school'. Nowadays, with everything being bottom-line oriented, the accountants appear to run the show. It sometimes appears that Engineers are an 'unnecessary expense' to many accountants [kind of like a person on welfare complaining about their payments from the taxpayers - I have yet to see an accountant contribute to generating physical goods going out the door]. The old-school companies are still out there, but as the entrepreneurs die off and get replaced by accountants, the quantities decrease. At least those are my observations Inge - not all US companies are that barbaric. Steve -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bev Christian Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 2:08 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] NTC RE: [TN] On the way to being unemployed.... OR a company can do it as well as can be expected. For instance, when I got laid off by Fiberglas Canada (Owens Corning subsidiary) in 1989, they: 1) Let us know in advance by several weeks that a lay off was coming 2) Told us why it was coming 3) Did it all within a couple of hours 4) Had our own managers tell us individually 5) Immediately assigned us to a counselor from the moment we left the manager's office 6) Quickly took us to a room with said counselor and 7 of our compatriots where we could talk about how we felt and to explain what was next 7) Gave us two weeks to clean out our offices on company time 8) Gave us a three day course on how to look for work (I still have that binder.), with mock taped interviews, etc. 9) Set us all up in an office (an old bank, ironically) for three months with a table, phone, no charge for long distance phone calls, a secretary, photocopier and several daily newspapers of major Canadian cities. 10) Oh, and one month's severance for every year worked and half a month's pay if there was an additional half month worked. My manager was the perfect English gentleman throughout. I remember that one other manager broke down giving his purchasing agent the bad news. But the good part is the guy getting laid off, who had been with the company since high school, got severance for, I think, about 15 years of service. Then they brought him back full time within a few months, then laid him off again, gave him a full severance, brought him back a third time and then laid him off and AGAIN gave him a full severance from the time he had originally joined the company. Talk about making out like a bandit! For myself I then a got a great job with Nortel that I stayed at for ten years, nine and a half wonderful years and six months of crap, but that's another story. Bev On vacation -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of R Sedlak Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 4:47 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] On the way to being unemployed.... The thing that most people lose track of is that, at the end of the day, the corporation needs good people more than the people need a specific corporation... I have been in this sort of situation a number of times, and have managed to dodge the bullet by going out BEFORE being laid off, and finding a job, and then going to management, and saying that as much as I LOVE this place, and do not want to leave, I must, unless I get a guarantee, in writing, that I will not be laid off for at least a year. I got the guarantee in one case, and in the other, got to walk out (to a new job) a week ahead of when I would have been laid off. The concept is best described as being pro-active, or Carpe Diem? Rudy Sedlak ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------