Starting to hear rumblings of early retirement packages coming .. anyone heard anything ?
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Typically the GSRs get the scraps...that being the case...For any of the LL folks to benefit from a golden handshake and avoid a lower lump sum payment after Jan1 2023...the packages need to be presented with enough time for everybody to decide and then trickle down happens to the GSRs. The greedy LLs will not lock themselves out of any good deals.
Offering them 4th Qtr would swap the NESC... It took a month for my paperwork to process... and nothing happens after Thanksgiving so that basically leaves about a month or so to process a bunch of packages.
The company wants people to take a lump sum and get rid of the future pension liability. If they wait until December to give people voluntary or involuntary separations, people will turn down the voluntary offers or take the monthly pension if involuntary separation.
If they are targeting older workers, waiting till early next year will lower lump sum payouts and make more sense.
Wrong to last poster. An LL4 said too much and there are packages coming by year's end. The LL4 stopped short of saying why they will come after involuntaries due to a NDA. However, if you read the tea leaves, the reason is clear. The people they want to take involuntaries never do. Also, it is ignorant to think they would announce them by now. This is brilliant strategy:
- Let the rumors about involuntaries fester
- Retirement eligible folks then look at retiring instead of being cut
- The more that retire without packages, the less the company spends on getting people to retire
- Those that do not retire but that the company wants gone get let go
- Once dust settles, announce packages hoping many take the voluntaries by EOY
WIN-WIN-WIN
No packages this year...they would have been announced by now.
The interest rate is prompting enough retirements so Ford does not need to offer anything.
Rumor is that a wave of in-voluntaries is coming first.
Followed by a voluntary offer to select areas/people. The voluntaries will allow the LL crowd to get their well earned golden parachutes sarcasm and to incentivize selected older workers to retire.
The LL want to control who is exiting. The narrative has been that the good people have been jumping ship (true) and that Hackett’s Smart Redesign was a clusterF (partially true: true-the implementation was a clusterF because the LL3-LL5 protected their cronies and axed critical non-supervisory LL6. But false in laying the blame all on Hackett as it lands squarely on the same LL3-LL5 who are now blaming Hackett ).
The LL3-LL5 ranks needs a thorough house cleaning. F would be better off releasing the whole lot and hiring in new middle management.
Last year they announced packages on July 12 with exits dates by Oct 31. A few years back they had phased retirement programs where the leaving employees were supposed to train the replacements over a 6 month period while working part time. For the most part it was a good idea and helped a lot of programs transition away from often the "go to person" who was retiring . It is very disruptive to PD teams to reassign tasks so giving 6 months notice is good practice. I agree the lump sum metrics will push the few wise folks to retire. On the other hand there is a big group of 55+ folks who are just pushing thru life with mortgages, vehicle loans and kids college costs with no end in sight. You would think Ford's HR department would have an active roll in employee succession but its all reactive. Everybody is expendable even though it might create some very disruptive results. If you want to get some people to retire you need to offer a package to create some buzz... Lump sum hit for all employees will be 15-25% and that is before tax dollars so working for free is a reality. Another thing to factor is that the retirement gains stop after 35 yrs so in the next year or so all those FCGs they hired in 1988-89-90 will be prime to retire. I predict lots of folks are holding their cards waiting for something in the next few weeks.
Package will coming by the end of 2030.
Information circulating that the company sees no reason to offer retirement packages this year. In the current interest rate environment, anyone eligible to retire will do so by 12/31/22. Run your pension estimate now and then again after 10/01/22 and see the difference. The potential decrease of several hundred thousand dollars will encourage you to retire by year end. There is no reason to work for free for the next few years if you don’t have to.
The only package will be the box that you carry out after getting fired. Sorry - no luxurious packages when the company is burning.
I have it on good authority that packages will be coming by end of the year.