this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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Among the ways you can do layoffs, this is one of the better ones for sure. People who are kind of checked out already anyway can get a nice paycheck on their way out and start looking for something new, while people who still have something important to get out of the job get the option to stay.
Consent matters!
I'm 4 weeks away from my voluntary redundancy. I was planning on leaving the job this year anyway, as I wanted to move, so to get a nice paycheck with it was a definite bonus.
Of the people that chose voluntary redundancy, it was mostly those without ties to the area, those that could move, young enough to re-skill, or old enough to retire. The ones that were forced into redundancy have families, mortgages, history in the area, enough baggage to cause inertia. Part of my reasoning to take the voluntary redundancy was to help save at least one person from that.
So absolutely, consent matters. It just sucks that this is happening at all.
The company's stated reasons for redundancy was to move skills to other locations in the country. This is after a year's long effort to co-locate in order to facilitate collaboration. What it really seems to be is that our location has very high staff retention, and therefore high salaries, and the company thinks it can hire younger and cheaper elsewhere. The skill and knowledge lost with this move is staggering, everyone can see that, but profit is the most important factor the company cares about, so it'll inflict its own wounds to get profit up. Capitalism is weird.
I got laid off a couple of years ago by a large tech company (rhymes with Brisco). It sort of sucked, but it was part of a mass layoff of about half the employees who had come into Brisco when our original small company was acquired by them. Interestingly enough, everybody who was laid off was single and childless - all the people who were married and/or had kids were kept on. At least until this new round of layoffs, because fuck everybody we're going with AI.
My work did this a few years ago and one guy who was planning on retiring took it. He got a full extra year of pay and 2 or 3 years of medical insurance out of the deal.
Absolutely, I'd happily take a redundancy payout from my current job.