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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.'"
"I'm sorry, it seems I've forgotten how to fix that. Good luck"
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Okay, sure, I have to cooperate and provide help completely free of charge. But that doesn't mean I have to provide competent help, or that I will actually remember everything.
seems to be a lot of missing information here. I would assume part of the severance package is some sort of final payment, otherwise no sane individual would agree to such terms. depending on what that final package was this could be a completely insane illegal request for free labour or it could be a quite reasonable request that they were compensated for up front in case it eventuates.
They should have done the honest moral profit center of packaging risky loans and betting against their customers on wall street. Good for nothing cost centers
http://saveie6.com/
Time lawyer up.
Unless the severance included two years full pay ....
"I'm sorry, I can't get time off my current job" - which isn't 'unreasonable'.
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.
Seems that they have been doing this for 6 years at least. Looks like a "standard template"... see section 8.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed...
Quite some time ago, I led an IRC channel called #badadvice. As you can probably gather from the name, the purpose of the channel was to give plausible-sounding but hilariously and catastrophically bad advice to submitted questions. The more the responders knew about the subject, the better they were at dispensing bad advice. We did this for free, but our raison d'être was right there in the name of the channel. Anyone taking our "advice" seriously was a moron.
Guess what? That's the quality of service the bank should be expecting from its former employees. If they have to do it for free, many lulz are going to be had.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I'd tell them to go fuck themselves. Unless the severance package amounts to 2 years salary then you are basically working for free. Oh and by the way...we want you to train the offshore people. No thanks.
If the terms are unreasonable, walk away.
I'd sign it, and every time they'd call for help I'd say "Oh yeah, we ran into that before, I don't remember exactly how we resolved that problem in the past, but you can try 'sudo rm -rf /' and see if that fixes it". I'm pretty sure they'd only call once.
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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and inflation you'd be very, very lucky if you had the savings to say no. Also, at least here in Arizona businesses have a million ways to weasel out of unemployment, and Georgia isn't exactly well know as a bastion of workers rights. There really isn't a safety net out there, and unless you're very, very lucky you won't be knitting one yourself...
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I'm a SunTrust customer...in fact, myself and my significant other both are. We've got a few accounts there. Well...that is, we have them until a day or two from now, when we will be closing them and taking our money to another bank. (I just spoke about this with her...I told her the terms of the severance package, her chin dropped...literally, I'm not exaggerating...and she's in.) All of you who are on board, able to do something like this to these galactic pigfuckers, and who pledge to do the same...do chime in?
Who's with me? :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Here's the solution to your problem, just run this simple command and everything will be fixed:
sudo rm -rf /
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Actually, I think its better than that.
(IANAL, but have negotiated numerous consulting contracts) Most contracts require fairly explicit language to be enforceable. "Reasonably available" == "meaningless" as far as a contract is concerned. If someone declined to cooperate with Suntrust's definition of "reasonable", Suntrust now has to decide if its worth their legal teams' time/money to pursue legal action. My guess is they'd threaten, then disappear. And if it was really urgent, they'd start discussions for a consulting contract. As stupid and draconian as their contract may be, they are in the business of finance, and know that money talks, and bullshit walks.
Frankly, I'm surprised their legal team even put that in the contract. Probably some AVP forced it in over legal's objections.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
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?
Employers aren't required to give you anything when they let you go, other than your final paycheck for whatever time you've worked but they haven't yet paid. However sometimes they will give you a "severance" which is additional pay. It can range anything for a meager token to a pretty hefty chunk of change. Generally better employers will offer one. Also employers will sometimes use them as a way to get people to leave voluntarily to avoid forced layoffs.
Usually, they don't come with strings attached. This one is extremely irregular. Either the severance package is really good so they expect people will take it despite the shit condition, they figure their employees are really desperate for money and will take it anyhow, or they are really out of touch.
Personally in a situation like that I'd be really tempted to do as other have suggested and take it, but then act like a completely forgetful idiot whenever I'm called in and generally be completely useless. Realistically I'd probably strike the availability cause in the contract and sign it. If they countersigned, great I get money with no strings, if they refuse I'd walk without the extra money because I don't need those conditions over my head.
Or living in a very, very liberal district. There's lots of ways. The most common is just to make the employees contract to hire and never actually hire them. You can also move the site to somewhere they can't get to and declare anyone that doesn't move has quit. You can cut pay/benefits/hours until they're more or less forced to quit. These are just the one's I've seen first hand. If all else fails most states use arbitration to decide if unemployment benefits were legitimate. Wait 6 months and sue the employee to get your benefits back. The Arbitrator is appointed by the local chamber of commerce or some other right wing, pro business group. They'll side with you.
I meant what I said. You're safety net's gone. Clinton & the blue dogs started dismantling it in the 90s and Bush finished the job. Now would be a good time to notice and do something about it...
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American IT needs to form a union, or at least a guild.
FTFY
I hope anyone on the chopping block has setup an array of sabotage protocols.
No, not sabotage. Never. Totally uncool and unprofessional. Not to mention potential grounds for incarceration.
FUCK THESE MBA ASSHOLES
Well, at least the clueless RIF ones.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I did provide help to a former employer. The employer had experienced prolonged financial distress. I survived numerous rounds of layoffs but #5 or so got me -- I liked the project I was working on, liked my coworkers, was located next door to the university I was attending grad school at and they were paying for it.
Most people found out they were getting layed off that day but received two months severance pay. I actually was told my layoff went into effect in a month so I could finish up some specialized tasks I was working on alone, same two months severance.
I was asked if it would be OK to call if they had any questions. I said yes, and asked if I could keep a copy of my more specialized source code for reference and of course I would respect the company's intellectual property. The VP of engineering said sure and gave me a signed letter authorizing my retention of a personal copy. The VP was an actual engineer, he knew and trusted me.
I had a few short phone calls with former co-workers where I answered some questions in the first six months of my departure.
About a year after my departure I was asked if I would like to return. I did not, I had a new job that I liked.
If there is a decent severance payout or if there is a reasonable chance for re-hire I would suggest offering some help. Even if not if you think the former boss or coworker might make a good future reference, or you might work together again somewhere else -- networking works, don't dismiss it -- you may want to offer some help too.
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.
These kinds of agreements ought not to be necessary. I've been in IT for so long I was there when you soldered together your own microcomputer... video games didn't exist yet.
I took pride in every system I worked in or supported. If I left a company on good terms, I'd answer any question at any time day or night if they needed me to.
Hell, I got calls from a company I hadn't worked at for 15 years, 3AM - moron in the computer room claimed my name was still on the list as the Level III to fix the printer bridge... No one else was available. It was in a Hospital - I knew that if that printer didn't work, patients didn't get their meds.
So I dug out my old ID badge, got dressed and drove over. The guard let me in, told me to get a new badge in the AM, and I rebooted the damn thing (still the same system - just running on a VM in a newer box now).
I called my old boss the next day (he's the CIO now) - told him what happened, and to take me out for dinner... I got a nice steak and a great conversation out of it. Consulting deals too. And WE updated the list in the computer room :-)
If I left on less than great terms, then screw 'em. I don't remember unless there's Benjamin's per hour for me to remember.
Compensate me well, I'll treat you well. Treat me like shit, send my job overseas, and expect me to train my replacement? hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.... ummmm, no.
You can bet that these contracts have forced arbitration in them -- you must agree to forced arbitration, or you don't get your severance pay. Because that's how evil banks roll.
So why is that bad? Well, consumers win 40% of the time when they sue a bank in court. But if a consumer instead is forced into arbitration because of a forced arbitration clause in the contract, consumers win less than 4% of the time, according to a study of arbitration decisions in California. I.e., forced arbitration basically means you signed away your right to sue in any meaningful way -- and the Supreme Court has upheld those agreements as fair and reasonable, so you can't even appeal to a "real" court.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Not in my country.
If you sign there, there is a burden on you to prove that their request is unreasonable should they ever execute it. If their system crashes and nobody else but you can recover it, you're going to be working for them, compensated "reasonably" or not, and you already chose not to be there.
If you want those people to transfer skills, then you keep them on to train a replacement. If you don't, you don't get to call them back whenever you feel like. If you only need assistance for the occasional lost password etc. then there's no need to cast it in stone this tightly.
Lawsuits don't come into it. If you're called as a witness, it doesn't matter who you work for now, you might be asked to appear before court.
Whether they use it or not, it wouldn't be there if there wasn't the suggestion they COULD use it. And that might well mean an awful lot of inconvenience even if you ARE paid, and provided for and a lot of bad times in front of your new boss explaining that what you signed before you left conflicts with THEIR contract. If nothing else, having to let a new employer know about the possibility is a burden in itself.
Pay for the proper transition, or don't. It's a simple choice. And if you let the one guy walk out the door being the only person knowing those details, not having anyone else trained or aware of what they did, him being the only person authorised to reset them, etc. then more fool you.
I don't see a problem with this -- as long as each employee gets a severance package worth $200,000. I'd view it as a retainer worth about 2 years of salary.
If the severance is not enough to act as a retainer for my services, then (as others mentioned) I would conveniently forget my old job if ever asked for help. I would suggest (off the record) that a substantial payment at that time could jog my memory, but without further compensation I just can't be bothered to try.
I did sign a 3 month retainer agreement when (voluntarily) leaving a job. It turned out to be a good deal for both parties. They needed me exactly once -- but wow, did they ever need me then, LOL. Of course, if you are leaving voluntarily, you are in a much stronger position to negotiate, since you have a waiting position and are not facing unemployment and needing a reference.
Such an agreement can include a significant lump sum of cash _precisely_ to provide compensation for being available, which helps make it an enforceable contract. That can especially include password information, critical technical contacts, passing along DNS management authority, or fleshing out documentation that seemed complete at the time of departure but was missing critical steps.
I've certainly seen such agreements, usually accompanied by a severance package of several months of pay, when the law required only that they receive vacation pay, and they're certainly not new. I even signed such an agreement a very long time ago during layoffs, since I'd trained the youngster who took over my core role and optimized myself right out of a job, and the severance package was generous enough to cover what I normally would have charged consulting fees for later. I did get a few calls later, especially when someone accidentally deleted my documentation and I pointed them ot the backups.