Hear me out for a second. When I was hired back in 2016, like many of you at lower than competitor carrier pay, I was told that by the year 2020-2021 nearly 50% of management would be eligible for retirement with Allstate. "Stick it out and you'll get rewarded." Which the company said would mean a tremendous amount of upward mobility if you proved yourself and stuck it out. This was part of a big push to start doing business differently, which almost meant the implementation of Continuous Improvement and RCPS, along with other learning initiatives.
To me, this was an implied contract. The CEO in late 2019 even wrote an article which was published in the NYT. In which he said, "Let’s create more high-paying jobs and restore faith in capitalism." - Tom Wilson In that same article he went on to promote the importance of 'creating jobs even if it might increase prices.'
What I'm getting at is the fact that the corporation had no intention of back-filling those management roles, no intention of promoting faithful employees and no intention fulfilling it's 'social corporate responsibility' (which was laid out so well in Tom's article).
When Allstate settled a class action lawsuit in California in 2017, what did they do after the settlement? Did they do the right thing and quit the practices that got them sued? Heck no, they revved up the engine with huddle boards and daily micromanagement tracking metrics. They retaliated against the employees and moved every claims office and claims job out of the state of California.
I'm not an attorney. Far from a legal expert. This to me seems like material misrepresentation of fact. Based on the available information, from investor calls, from internal calls and memos. I played the long game, we all played the long game and in the end Allstate ended up reducing expense structures by at least 20-25% per department on average. In the end the numbers could be upwards of 8,000-10,000 employees impacted by the riff.
I think of it like the corporate version of the Marvin Act, which established community property rights for 'common law' marriages. Basically, in essence, Lee Marvin strung along a live-in girl friend and told her 'I'll take care of you no matter what happens to us.' By doing so he created a financial reliance and implied contract with his girl friend. Allstate implied one thing and did the exact opposite of what they have been telling the public and employees for years.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/opinion/business-roundtable.html