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Bank's Severance Deal Requires IT Workers To Be Available For Two Years (computerworld.com)
dcblogs points out this story at Computerworld about a severance agreement that requires laid-off IT employees to be available to help out for two years. The article reads in part: "SunTrust Banks in Atlanta is laying off about 100 IT workers as it moves work offshore. But this layoff is unusual for what it is asking of the soon-to-be displaced workers: The bank's severance agreement requires terminated employees to remain available for two years to provide help if needed, including in-person assistance, and to do so without compensation. Many of the affected IT employees, who are now training their replacements, have years of experience and provide the highest levels of technical support. The proof of their ability may be in the severance requirement, which gives the bank a way to tap their expertise long after their departure. The bank's severance includes a 'continuing cooperation' clause for a period of two years, where the employee agrees to 'make myself reasonably available' to SunTrust 'regarding matters in which I have been involved in the course of my employment with SunTrust and/or about which I have knowledge as a result of my employment at SunTrust.'"
unenforceable.
Just like the clauses that say you cant go work for a competitor.
Not sure about the US but in Australia those clauses cant really be enforced. Still companies include them because the rely on people simply believing that they must comply.
1: Suntrust is deeply, deeply underwater. Texas Ratio of 17+. That means if they went under right now, their creditors, including depositors, would get 5 cents on the dollar. This is a company deeply affected by the subprime mortgage racket, literally they paid a billion bucks to the justice department to settle foreclosing on people's homes they didn't own or have titles to. It is a company that needs to fail and it's current and previous management needs to be imprisoned.
http://www.bankregdata.com/allAQmet.asp?met=TXR
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/suntrust-settles-with-justice-dept-over-mortgages-talks-continue-for-citigroup-and-bank-of-america/?_r=0
2: This is not just a desperation move, it's almost certainly a move made by an Indian manager, coming from India, where there are no worker protections, and this kind of deal is going to result in a huge class-action lawsuit after a few months or so of "on-call" support. If you are reading this and from sun-trust, call lawyers, get contacts lists NOW, and strategize to get as much money as humanly possible from these scum. Make sure to discuss pressing whatever criminal charges you can as well, make sure to muck up the case where they are assuredly mucking up black-letter FSLA laws. Make sure the world knows if you're an IT manager from Sun-trust that you cannot manage a department competently.
3: Now that I know you are off-shoring IT and are badly underwater, I also know you are probably off-shoring accounting. The problem here for the bank is when the new serfs start stealing things; there's no downside since the Indians don't go to jail since they're remote, and they have all the motive in the world. If you have stock get it out NOW!
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I too find it slightly odd the article doesn't even mention what the severance package benefits are. This is almost certainly compensation for what's likely at least several months of pay after termination. Unless I badly misunderstand the legal issues involved, I'm pretty sure there's absolutely no obligation to accept the agreement if they're willing to decline the severance package.
When I was laid off, I signed an "I won't sue you" agreement for a couple of month's pay. I was being laid off for legitimate financial reasons (i.e. too many expenses, not enough revenue), and the company was honest with us and tried to be up front about everything. I certainly wasn't planning to sue them, so I didn't mind signing.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not defending the bank here, especially since they're laying off these folks and outsourcing the work, but I think some people may be misunderstanding how these severance deals work - there's often some conditions as a part of the package. I've just never heard of conditions like these before.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
No, they're going to sue you for damages for negligence, using the contract to keep the legal process going long enough to force you into bankruptcy.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I live in Norway where one of the largest banks moved their IT operations out of the country to TCS (think Tata) and I immediately changed banks.
I have some little problems with outsourcing banking... especially to India.
Laws in different countries are different and enforced differently than they are in your own country. If you've ever visited India and spent any time there, you would know that one dishonest person in the flock can grab a bunch of money and run like hell and never be found. India is huge, has language/communications issues between villages and an enterprising criminal would never be caught.
India is also the country which brings us "Windows Care" and other similar companies which are call centers to scam people. They call your house (sometimes up to 5 times a day) and make threats and intentionally misrepresent themselves as Microsoft. After tracking their IP addresses to a registered company (it has changed again) and calling their local police department to report racketeering and international wire fraud charges, I was informed that :
1) Gartner (when paid by Symantec) reported that 90% of all computers are infected by a virus
2) As such, if you're willing to pay the $300 and give them access to your computer to install anti-virus, it's perfectly reasonable to assume there's a 90% chance they're performing a good service for you.
3) It is not illegal in India to claim you're someone you're not unless it infringes the cast system.
4) Thank you for calling... please don't let the door hit you on the ass as you leave.
Would your nations money in the hands of a company located in a country which provides you no recourse against criminal activities taken against you so long as they can provide some convoluted logic as to how they're helping you?
A client signed a contract for services with my employer, and included a clause that I would be available even if I left their employment, binding me to be available to provide information, specifically passwords, but also any information I 'developed, maintained' blahblahblah related to the design and administration of their systems,
And they let the contract end at the end of the first term, moving to another provider. I answered a lot of questions during and after the handover. No problem, ethical and professional behavior I would have engaged in even without a specific contractual obligation, if the former client made the request.
Then more than a year later, and after I had left that employer and moved to another state, I was contacted by the current provider. They were frantic to recover an administrator password for a server, change the technical and administrative contacts for the client's domain, and locate backup tapes for the system from a year before, did I happen to have any?
Well, sadly;
0. The current servers were all Windows Server 2003, upgrades from Server 2000. I left the system with NetWare 5.1 servers. I never knew the Windows Administrator passwords.
1. The backups they were looking for were, sadly, Windows Server backups. I didn't 'happen to have any'.
2. Very soon (days) after this call, I was contacted by an attorney explaining that they would sue me for the information. I explained as best I could what I had, and assured him that I would countersue for expenses, and that I had no useful information for them.
3. I started getting more calls from this former client begging me to relinquish the domain. I directed them to the current records, where my name and contact no longer appeared. I was powerless. They contacted my former employer, now out of business, and he thankfully dismissed them.
4. Finally I got a really official-looking letter from the attorney threatening me with all manner of unpleasantness.I am bless to have a dear friend who is an accomplished attorney, retired, and he gave it a cursory look and assured me that it was pure bluster. He even encouraged me to respond with some key phrases that would give that attorney the right way to tell their client to let up.
5. And I found that the former client somehow managed to file a professional lien against my name. I'm not a licensed professional, engineer, or bound by any fiduciary duty other than ethics and a contract that was long lapsed and had actually been fulfilled. This took three years to remove, and ultimately resulted in censure for the attorney involved, little bits of bad press for the client and their current provider, and a lot of questions from my friends, family, employer, and reporters thinking there was a story there. I tried to keep it quiet. My former employer still doesn't know, and I wouldn't bother him.
In hindsight, I should have responded to the initial requests with all the info I had, and then, if approached, refused and threatened action if they persisted in asking me questions I could not answer.
If I were in the OP's position, I would sign. It's not like they could take my severance, and goodwill is either worthless or priceless. Even if they started calling me at all hours, I can fake a disconnect and ignore their calls until the next morning.
But 2 years is a long time. 6 months is reasonable, perhaps.
Ultimately, we often have to work for real jerks. A paycheck overrules pride when you have responsibilities..
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In companies that care about IT security (which, as it should be clear by now, does NOT include banks), the standard procedure - even in countries like Denmark where you get three to six months notice depending on how long you worked there - is to remove all access to the systems the same moment you give a person his notice. As in "we're going to keep paying your salary for the next six months (as you are still officially an employee), but you can go home and enjoy life". If they need your help, you're going to tell someone what to do, you are not going to get access.