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Facing Layoff, An IT Employee Makes A Bold Counteroffer (computerworld.com)
ComputerWorld reports:
In early December, Carnival Corp. told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini, a large IT outsourcing firm. The employees had a choice: Either agree to take a job with the contractor or leave without severance. The employees had until the week before Christmas to make a decision about their future with the cruise line. By agreeing to a job with Paris-based Capgemini, employees are guaranteed employment for six months, said Roger Frizzell, a Carnival spokesman. "Our expectation is that many will continue to work on our account or placed into other open positions within Capgemini" that go well beyond the six-month period, he said in an email.
Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements, and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs. "After receiving his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer. It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," signed by the company's CEO. In addition, the letter also demanded a $100,000 donation to any charity that provides services to unemployed American workers. "I appreciate your time and attention to this matter, and I sincerely hope that you can fulfill these terms."
And he's also working directly with a lawyer for an advocacy group that aims to "stop the abuse of H-1B and other foreign worker programs."
Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements, and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs. "After receiving his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer. It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," signed by the company's CEO. In addition, the letter also demanded a $100,000 donation to any charity that provides services to unemployed American workers. "I appreciate your time and attention to this matter, and I sincerely hope that you can fulfill these terms."
And he's also working directly with a lawyer for an advocacy group that aims to "stop the abuse of H-1B and other foreign worker programs."
Dear Matthew,
No.
Roger Frizzell
CEO, Carnival Corp.
If you want better workplace conditions, better wages, and better treatment then the best way to get it is to unionize. It puts you in a stronger bargaining position so you have more leverage against ultimatums like "either agree to take a job with the contractor or leave without severance".
Not entitlement, incentive.
There was a time that working toward making a company successful was an incentive as it ensured further employment. Not anymore.
You idiots do understand that he isn't even in office yet, and you are already bitching about the job he is doing? How retarded is that?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Maybe just avoid companies which persue such practices. FOr me, Carnival Corp would keep my feet off any Carnival cruise ship. Yes these are strong forces of globalization but the least they could have done is would be to give the employees a decent severance package and some time regardless whether they train their cheaper replacements. Such stories do good to motivate kids to pursue any STEM area.
You have to try to stand up.
The easiest thing for the ultrawealthy is to make you think you're powerless and to admit defeat without a battle.
The best thing to do is to not train the replacements.
The best thing to do is to fight it, even if it turns out ugly.
You need to back up your 'offer' with something substantial.
I agree. They should unionize and adopt a collective bargaining position. Then the counteroffer will carry some weight.
You idiots do understand that he isn't even in office yet, and you are already bitching about the job he is doing? How retarded is that?
The same kind of retarded Republicans were doing before President Obama took office eight years ago. All we heard for weeks was him being a socialist and how he was going to drive this country into the ground (conveniently ignoring the driving into the ground Bush did to the country), how he would wreck the economy (again, ignoring how Bush destroyed the economy), how he would do this or that, all before he had taken office.
But please, tell us again how it's only those idiots who are bitching before someone takes office.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's not rocket science, all it takes is for this guy to write a letter to Carnival and tell them that he and the 200 others will do the work for less than what Capgemini is charging since Capgemini like any other contracting firm needs overhead to maintain profitability and they would do it at cost. Capgemini will not be able to outbid them. Once back at their old job, it's the ultimate Fuck You chance to create massive budget cost overruns that were never forecast or predicted. This shit happens in government bids all the time and wouldn't surprise me if Capgemini wouldn't have created the same situation for Carnival. Suing them will be useless and will only blacklist him from future employers as he will be looked at as a huge liability even if he's a rock-star engineer.
That hasn't changed. If you have specialized skills that are important to a company, they'll keep you. IT services don't fall into that category.
CapGemini would be in a world of shit. Think about it...They were/are banking on a majority of the existing IT workers to do "knowledge transfer" in order to be successful in fulfilling their contract. If the existing IT workers COLLECTIVELY said NO, there is no way that CG could assume the contract and not get sued for utter failure. No KT, no success. Together, we can win - separately, we are at their mercy (of which they demonstrably have none).
There are some universal problems with unions, but most of the ones in the US stem from the fact that US union laws are awful. If you tried to design something more easily coopted into a political machine, you would be hard-pressed to do so.
It's interesting that on Slashdot, when it's anyone else's non-IT job getting outsourced or automated, there is a lot of chortling and discussion of buggy whip manufacturers and how non-IT workers should just suck it up. There was a story about automated truck drivers in the last month that was full of comments denigrating these workers and that it was good for society that their job would soon be done by a robot. When it's an IT job getting outsourced, "IT'S AN OUTRAGE!!!!!" Doesn't take much insight to realize why this issue will never get political traction. Who wants to stick up for the IT people when the IT people just offered snark for everyone else that was automated/outsourced before them?
The GP is wrong, but mainly because it uses 8" floppy disks , not 5.25". Those are way too modern for our nuclear arsenal.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Carrier got $7M in tax benefits over the next 10 years in return for them investing $16M into upgrading the plant and keeping 300 jobs.
300 jobs * 40k median salary = 12M with an effective tax rate of ~25% = 3M/y between state and federal through income taxes
Your figures aren't accurate for a number of different reasons.
1. Why do you count federal tax? This money was a state tax deal (Trump does not yet have the power to make deals for the federal government), this deal was done on the authority of Pence as the Governor of Indiana. If the feds aren't giving any money for the deal, why do you count money that they receive as offsetting the cost of the deal?
2. You assume that if the deal doesn't happen, that the state won't receive any revenue from the employees in the next 10 years. Most or all of the employees are likely to be employed again and paying taxes to the state.
3. Why do you think the effective tax rate of someone that makes $40k is 25%? A single person who grosses $40k and has no deductions has an AGI of under $30,000 after a personal exemption of $4,050 and a standard deduction of $6,300. On an AGI of $30,000 the federal income tax is $4036 (13.5%) and the Indiana state income tax is $990 (3.3%). We should really only be counting the second one (see point 1) so for your 300 employees Indiana is paying Carrier $700k per year and they are getting back $297k in tax revenue, as well as providing state services for those employees and the company. Of course, if they are married, have children, or have other deductions that tax rate is likely to be even lower but let's use the best-case scenario.
Spending $700k/y to gain $3M/y seems a reasonable business deal for a government to take. Even if you just focus on state taxes, you're at least going to break even.
Spending $700k a year to get $297k in revenue is not a good deal. The alternative is to spend $0 and get somewhere in the neighborhood of $297k (perhaps some of the laid off workers don't get as good of a job or don't get a job at all in the next 10 years). It's not a good deal for the state even if you do break even, the citizen pays $1 in taxes and the government then gives that $1 to the company that employs the citizen - how does that benefit the state? Take it to the extreme, say every company in Indiana has this deal, so every time a citizen pays his taxes the government gives those tax dollars back to the company that employs him. How does the government pay for any services, how does it build roads or hire police or feed hungry kids? If only some of the companies get the deal, then the employees of the companies that don't get the deal end up paying for everything. I thought the government picking winners and losers was supposed to be a bad thing according to free-market conservatives, when did that change?
If you can replicate this model 10x, then yes, that is a good thing.
No, if you replicate this deal 10x you have 10x the loss. So instead of losing $403k a year on the deal you can lose $4 million.
To sum up, it's a horrible deal for Indiana, it's a slightly good deal for the economy as a whole and it's a great deal for Carrier. You can't prevent offshoring manufacturing by bribing the companies with tax dollars, you need to make structural changes -- not that it matters, robots and AI will only get better and manufacturing jobs will continue to fall worldwide.
Enigma
Are you seriously saying inflation is 8%?
As in 2012 dollar is now worth $0.73 and if your pay hasn't gone up 36% over that time you've fallen backwards?
As someone who's pay hasn't gone up even close to that much, I'm calling bullshit.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg