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Verizon Announces 10,400 Employees Will Voluntarily Leave the Company (techcrunch.com)
Verizon today announced that 10,400 employees -- about 7 percent of its worldwide workforce -- are taking buyouts to leave the company. "This is part of an effort to trim the telecom giant's workforce ahead of its push toward 5G," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Verizon put this offer on the table in September with a goal to save $10 billion in cash by 2021. The offer, which included 60 weeks of salary bonus and benefits depending on length of service, applied to 44,000 employees across Verizon's business. "For those who were accepted, the coming weeks and months will be a transition. For the entire V Team, there will be opportunities to work differently as we prepare for the great things to come at Verizon," CEO Hans Vestberg said in a note to employees, CNBC reports.
#MAGA
If it's not in the press release, I'm guessing we will hear that they will be generating cost efficiencies that will make customer service better and create better products across its entire product line for its customer base. Where have we heard that before.
There are certainly issues with the way the U.S. calculates unemployment to suggest that the numbers aren't as good as the government would like people to believe, but trying to relate the entire U.S. economy to the actions of a single company within it is just stupid.
It's basically the same as the idiots who dismiss global warming because they've had a slightly colder winter in their part of the world.
What does a reduction in force have to do with the deployment of 5G?
This used to be euphemised as a lay-off. Now they call it a buyout?
Seriously...
The people taking the buyout are either people close to retirement who have lots of experience, or they're people who are good enough that they are confident they'll easily find another job. The net result is that while they're losing 7% of their workforce, they're likely losing 20% of their experience and 20% of their productivity.
Of course they are leaving voluntarily. Because if they don't meet their number of 10400 people voluntarily, it will change to involuntarily. This is a common big company buyout of employees. The company will emphasise the first offer will be the best and if they don't hit there number there will be another offer but not nearly as good. So as an employee you have to ask yourself if you're in danger or not, and is it worth the money or not.
Either way, Verizon will make their number, and if they get a few extra then bonuses to execs all around!
A large aerospace company I used to work for did this a couple of times back in the 1980s and 1990s. They offered 2 weeks of pay for every year of service, plus company-paid health insurance for some lengthy period I don't remember. The people who took the offers were almost exclusively long-term employees who were just about ready for retirement. Turned out to be great deals for them.
"We are making changes that will make us much more popular and make many more profits than we had before, therefore we will get rid of people"
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
They will all have jobs at Comcast, or tech support, ready to help you clear your browser cache, and install all kinds of "helpful" software.
It's your own fault for praising the Carrier deal that never even delivered.
What else do you expect but to be judged by your own standards?
First they are euphemized, then they'll be euthanized.
Oh well, that's the way it works today.
Standards are "a level of quality or attainment". Are you stating we've set the bar too high?
Do the math. The research necessary to formulate opinions on important decisions has recently doubled from 140 line items to 280.... given the amount of additional research necessary to be current, who the frack can time-afford to keep up with that increased information flow.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I wish I could get to paid to not work for Verizon!
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"voluntarily" = not actually voluntarily. If you don't volunteer - then you will probably be performance managed out of a job and then get nothing.
I wonder who Verizon's latest crop of management consultants is. I've been seeing a ton of stories along these lines, almost exclusively at old-line companies. I think the execs are being told, "Listen, if we fire all the experienced people and replace them with college grads, our digital transformation will accelerate to unheard-of levels, AND you'll save a ton of money on salary!"
I'm well aware that large companies collect a lot of dead wood (or at least wood that isn't super-productive anymore.) But, as I've said I've seen this over and over again during the run-up of what I'll coin Dotcom Bubble 2.0. IBM is firing anyone in the US and Europe who isn't deemed hip enough to jump on the cloud/mobile/social/AIMLBlockchain/cognitive train. I saw a few months ago that AT&T is doing the same thing. HP/HPE/DXC dumped something like 60,000 people over the last couple of years during their spin-merge. It's almost like they're daring any attorney who might bring an age discrimination lawsuit to just try it and see how they're crushed. Even Microsoft, who was famous for never having to lay people off started doing so in the last few years...and they're not exactly hurting for money.
One thing I wonder is how many people being fired are from the "old school" days when a job with the phone company amounted to permanent employment. I'm assuming that's why they're giving them up to 60 months' salary and benefits...to discourage wrongful termination suits. All I know is this...I'm 43 and work very hard to stay current...and I'm sure that won't save me when the company I'm working for decides to fire me when I'm 55 and still years away from being able to access my retirement money.
when I first saw their headline I thought it meant folks were changing jobs, not getting fired. Also they call 3 weeks of severance per year of work "generous"...
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GregMmm's post hit it squarely on the head.
Folks ,who can, are leaving voluntarily because if they don't, they're candidates to be let go during the next round of layoffs.
We see the same song and dance about twice a year. First and last quarters usually.
They are actively canvassing folks twice a year to see who is interested in leaving. Anyone who doesn't take the hint is tossed
into the magic sorting machine to find out who get's the short straw on the next draw.
Lots of " re-organizations " moving folks around which dissolves some groups, but inflates others ( by combining groups ) which
gives HR all they need to cut folks loose. ( They have too many employees doing job X )
Hell, they even started dangling the lump sum carrot in front of management.
Previously, management had to take the annuity and did not have the lump sum option. Now, in an effort to cut as many folks
as they can, the lump sum option is now a reality.
Many folks are waiting around for some magical " package " like the days of old where folks got a few years of service tacked on,
a pension bump and a decent amount of exit cash. ( Which is why we have so many folks with 30, 40 and even 50+ years of service
still working ) They haven't figured out that if the company were to offer it again, so many would take it, the company would have to turn
around and go on a hiring spree. Thus, no package.
My best guess as to why is due to the stupid amounts of debt the company took on with its latest assimilation . . . .er. . . acquisition.
What the company doesn't realize is this: All the folks they want to push out the door are the ones with all the expertise. :|
By the time they get done with layoffs, they'll just end up having to hire them back as contractors to keep things running
We're already starting to see hints of this.
"Contact the database administrator for access" :|
"We can't, they retired."
"What about the alt-administrator ?"
"They retired too. . . "
"Is there anyone maintaining that database at all ?"
"Nope, they all retired."
(sarcasm).....removing the "net neutrality" is not helping the telecom industry !!! (/sarcasm)
They don't have to buy them out. My employer can fire us all tomorrow an not pay us anything more than the money they owe us for Monday and Tuesday. Sixty weeks severance is pretty nice.
Makes a lot of sense in today's legal world
Fired = discrimination lawsuit
Laid off = likely some sort of lawsuit
Buyout = no lawsuit
Voluntary buyout = can't claim discrimination because you chose to, not the company.
They offered employees up to 60 weeks of pay (more than a year) to *not* work for a shitty company and go get a different job instead, perhaps after taking a 9-month paid vacation. That sounds pretty great to me!
I wish my company would give me a bonus equal to a year of pay to get me to leave and go work for Raytheon or somebody else. I'd darn sure take that!
I'd probably take a 2-month break to vacation and do some things around the house, then get a job and chunk 10 months pay into savings. That savings would be my "fuck you money". If the boss turns out to be an ass at the new job, I can comfortably say "fuck you" and take another two-month vacation before looking for where I want to work next.
I wonder how many of these are H1Bs due to government rejecting a lot of H1B work visas lately?
Verizon has ~$1 billion of bonds due next year and more coming due the next few years.
Verizon is very unlikely to refinance the debt at anywhere the coupon payment / interest rate the existing bonds have.
They're BBB rated and one cut above junk status and, being unable to refinance the bonds for near investment grade rates will push them into junk status and make all of their future borrowing costs higher.
Most of large corporate America is in the same situation with large debt issuances over the last few years a quite low rates used to buy back stock.
Now, many of the same companies are on the verge of not being able to refinance debt at anywhere near investment grade rates.
Rates for risk free US treasury are 3% for 5 years and more for 10 years. Corporation with less than stellar balance sheets - *cough* lots of the mega corporations - are facing a large pressure to clean up balance sheets by cutting costs and avoiding the 1 downgrade to junk status. Hence the near inverted yield curve.
Company makes big moves
Check the balance sheet
Check if the debt is trading well above the company's S&P debt rating (Finra market data has this)
Check if the company has a large amount of debt maturing in the next year or three
The reason Verizon offered severance was to eliminate the possibility of lawsuits and/or because the managers didn't want to decide who to fire. The H1Bs are going to be fired because their visas expired, and there are no decisions. Hence, no reason to give them anything.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
1: Announcing "We need to cut X percentage of our staff" announces to the entire world that your company is unstable and really screwed up its staffing, training, and planning operations. The reason some IT Staff switch jobs every 2-3 years is due to this.
2: Instead of announcing layoffs, companies have begun announcing buy-outs. Very inexpensive PR, you don't post "We're cutting 10,000 jobs" in the news, and you almost attract new, young employee's wanting to be bought out.
Que an entire thread of comment astroturf and censored comments talking about how much Verzion Paid Slashdot to publish Tech Crunch AstroTurf.
Lots of new positions at tumblr monitoring porn.
I do not give consent to allow my body to be slowly microwaved on low by 5G.
My tin foil hat now needs to be upgraded to a full body tin foil suit.
Make America Cancer Free Again !
Why would they be cutting employees right before a huge rollout of new technology? To me it would seem you would need all your current employees and maybe some new ones to deal with the rollout and all the challenges that will arise from it?
Why would they announce this many *internal* people hate Verizon enough to want to leave of their own volition? PR suicide
This. You actually have to sign a deal agreeing there will be no lawsuit, public commentary, or unemployment claim.
Verizon lays off so many people there unemployment rates would have to be insane by point without these agreements. Also, they aren't giving everyone sixty weeks. It might have changed but a couple years ago there is a formula and it requires several years to qualify.
Most importantly, when they do these things it isn't voluntary. Your choice is to be gone with the agreement or be gone without the agreement. They are canning you either way.
the way smaller companies get away with. Ageism (fundamentally a salary reset for a position) is much harder to prove when there's not a group large enough to establish a pattern.
Verizon did this in a decent way to those employees. No beef here.
Verizon and other in telecomm and tech have done this before. Many of the 10k walking were told package or pink slip.
It's voluntary, or else.
I've seen family members, trying to read the tea leaves at their employers. A bit young to retire, trying to figure out whether it is better to stay and risk layoff with reduced benefits, or accept a buyout now.
In some cases there were multiple rounds of buyouts (I've never seen more than 3 though). If the company doesn't hit it's targets, eventually they switch to involuntary layoffs.
Merely announcing a "voluntary buyout program" is enough to send a strong message to the workforce. And companies that layoff significant parts of the workforce, often wind up going back to the well more than once. Layoffs are a sign of poor management. Layoffs seem like a quick answer to that but essentially, how can it be? Unless you lay off the bad managers, the systemic management problems will remain.
I read the GP with a giant /s
In my own social sphere, I know quite a few people who are painfully underemployed. When their employers have full-time positions open up, they get hundreds of applicants. Meanwhile, most of the front-line slots are part-time, capped at 30 hours/week to avoid paying benefits. They do struggle to fill those slots (what a shock, the labor pool for those positions already has a shitty part-time "barely make rent" job -- little need to switch).
None of these people show up in the "unemployment" statistics.
True they were started under the Obama and the previous Bush administration, the changes if I recall affected people who had been jobless for a certain amount of time being taken off the unemployment figures resulting in a higher than normal unemployment rate
Let me translate that CEO message for you:
Verizon is a money grubbing ball of fuck you and I'm retiring pretty soon, so fuck you, fuck you and you're all fired. I don't give a shit about creating jobs or even keeping the employees I have. Yummy down on this paltry chunk of cash I'm breaking off for you in trade for your resignation, you worthless piece of peasant shit. I'll be heading home to bang my trophy wife inside my third five million dollar house now.