Thread regarding 3M layoffs

Years ago we were told they would have to give us more to entice us to stay. Reality is that they took stuff away so we couldn’t afford to leave.

@180: The RMSA could be next. When the Medicare-eligible HRA plan was rolled out in 2009, the annual credit increase was set at 3%. Years later, the annual increase was changed from 3% to 1.5%. And now it will be 0%. When the Retiree Medical Savings Account (RMSA) was rolled out in 2009, the annual credit increase was also set at 3%. In 2016, the annual RMSA credit increase was changed from 3% to 1.5%. The history of changes to these programs suggest that a change to the annual RMSA credit could be coming.

Not surprising that they would have such language. I wonder what will be next to get axed from our employee benefit & payroll package😵‍💫

Good luck with a class action lawsuit. The 3M Retiree Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) Summary Plan Description clearly states:

"3M reserves the right to amend and terminate the Plan in whole or in part, at any time and in any respect and for any reason and either prospectively or retroactively or both. 3M’s right to amend or terminate the Plan includes, without limitation:
▪ Changes in the eligibility requirements;
▪ Amount of credits in a Reimbursement Account; and
▪ Benefits provided and termination of all or a portion of the coverage provided under the Plan.
No or-l statements or representations can amend the Plan. 3M makes no promise to continue the Plan or the benefits offered under the Plan in the future, and individuals have no vested right to the Plan or the benefits offered under the Plan."

So 3M can modify or terminate the Retiree HRA plan at any time for any reason.

@OP any thoughts on a class action suit??

Employees would never be treated this bad if there was a long term plan for the remaining businesses. This is determined purely on observed actions. BB is here to end 3M, not revive it.

@vn Plus, HR and Mgmt positioned options as part of your 'total compensation.' The Roman Empire ran the company into the sh!tter, so any vested options are underwater! A decade of 'compensation' for many just vanished.

Don't feel very sorry for you! Many of us have lost well over a million dollars. 3M happily delivered "great" results at our expense. Worked over 31 years to have my position "eliminated" 7 months before 55? Lost 75% of the pension annuity, 100% of the accrued retiree medical, 100% of the retiree medical credit (once you get to Medicare) and all unvested RSUs/Options. Thank you 3M for destroying our retirement.

When morale feels like it could turn a corner, the company comes up with some petty new way to make employees care even less. Are the savings worth it? Doubtful.

@nw When 3M stripped options, condensed the performance rating scale, and flattened the organization, it sent a consistent message- there will be no sharing in success, no reward for performance, and no path upward. To which all affected employees should say, "If you don't care, we don't care."

Not a surprise at all. The Mother started embracing competitive mediocrity when they stripped options from levels T4 - T4.5 around 2006. Hush money was given out and a kool aid drinker told me what a good deal that was. I told the drinker that his reasoning didn’t add up.

I didn’t receive the letter but that’s because 3M already took away all my retiree medical benefits by supposedly “eliminating my position” after 27 years for no good reason other than I was Portfolio 1. I probably wouldn’t have been able to retire a 3Mer anyway now since I worked in SIBG where my division was actually doing quite well, which was further evidence the layoffs were unjustified and just corporate greed. 3M might have forgotten me but I haven’t. I “wave” at them twice a day on my commute to working for an ethical company instead.

Got the same letter. 3% increase wasn't near enough to compensate for increasing health care costs (my BCBS supplement is going from $285/month (already high) to $330/month! a 16% increase).....but at least it was something. It's insulting, frankly.

@ja hard to believe this company was once lauded as an innovation factory in Built to Last about 30 years ago. Competitive applies to jg 15 and below. In other words, we will find the minimum wage and benefits and reset the compensation to the d-mbed down level.

Meanwhile compensation for higher levels is focused on "retaining talent" where regular 3Mers would gladly fill those roles for 20 percent less than BB is paying.

What next? Bring in Kearney (again) to recommend what a jackal could figure out.

Hey BB please tell your operatives who read every word here that quiet quitting is only.juat beginning. What goes around comes around. Take that and put it in your pipe and smoke on your yacht.

I loved how in the letter it tries to reassure the reader that this is competitive and makes so much sense. I guess we have gone from Good to Great to Grim (as in reaper).

There is still paid FMLA if they would ever see how much is paid out from that might be able to keep those benefits.

FMLA is 12 weeks unpaid that’s it. At my manufacturing site we average at least eight callouts a day for FMLA and the employees brag about. Taking advantage of it HR won’t do anything and yet they’re living in a good life getting paid not to forget 40 hour bereavement caregiver on top of this great vacation policy. They just changed given the new employees more and yet they still don’t come to work. Why come to work when you’re getting paid?

3M over pays there production hourly employees and the ones caring the plant get nothing. Great job with the cut BB we all can tell you what to cut to make 3M successful again but want listen to the employees that care about 3M. The litigations and everything that 3M has. Put themselves into it all being because of poor leadership how did this person because they are__. Not on performance of previous role, maintain certain number, certain criteria, and not based on job knowledge.

Is this a change to the Medicare HRA that retirees get annually starting at age 65 (~$2,200)? Are the RMSA credits that employees earn from age 40 until retirement affected?

@cy “being treated like the enemy” that’s a perfect description of how I felt in the latter years there

They want you fighting a culture war so you won’t fight a class war

All these changes, definitely impact those who are a few years from retirement; however, I just don’t see how younger people will ever be able to afford to retire, the days of a comfortable retirement are coming to an end. And company profits continue .. the days of a company caring about their employees’ livelihoods are long gone-it’s so disappointing

@cy BB has no conscience. The people who sustained this company through the Great Recession and Covid are given an en--a without lube. Meanwhile, a guy who had a 35 percent approval rating as CEO of his former company comes in with his rich Floridian lifestyle and just can't miss every opportunity to take more away from the people who really busted butt to make this company profitable. Minnesota Nasty at its worst. Is he going to resume the layoffs of people just under 55 like Tireman did to sc--w more people out of a reasonable pension?

@cr ...same ... Over 30 years here and I have been eating unpaid overtime for the vast majority of those years... My reward is having my pension cut short, my medical benefits cut, reporting to ignorant school yard bullies, and constantly being treated like the enemy; because I can remember a time when this company did not hate it's employees and was run by 3Mers instead of consultants. Now with only a few years left until retirement, I am faced with the reality that I will have to continue working until my death because of promises made and broken by "the most ethical company in the world". Good thing my job is safe in the meantime as I work in SIBG ..bwhahaha ...Always a wonderful thing to wake up and see on your news feed that your CEO is shopping your division to a Wall Street Bank. Completely and totally disgusted and frustrated...

@c9 Health insurance costs will keep going up. The medical benefit credits that can be used to help pay for it will no longer rise with inflation so will decay to the point of meaninglessness when it will become most important, late in life. So glad I spent my healthy years su-king solvent fumes so that they could strip away my benefits to goose the stock up another penny per share. May the exhaust fumes always blow back to the decks of their yachts.

Current employee here, what changed?

So low. Sorry man

Received same letter. Can HR/execs making this decision and others for all employees understand taking away insignificant %’s will cause more damage in your employees passion and work effort than the measly amount you save to tell the analyst. BB writing checks and making decisions his a-s can’t cash!