Thread regarding Lumen Technologies layoffs

There is little hope of surviving a PIP these days

@b3 You get your pension “penalty free” when you leave regardless. What you do with it is what affects how it’s handled, in terms of taxes and penalties. You can do what I did and roll that, along with the Principal 401k, into a rollover IRA. I have a lot more control over that and I’ve done quite well with it. Talk to a investment advisor over a coworker.

Lumen is moving on!
Something they should have done a decade ago.

@b7
I don’t disagree with all of the above. But if I were to double dip, and I definitely can find a job tomorrow splicing fiber on maintenance cuts as an independent my insurance costs and personal costs, truck, tools, gas etc would eat up my pension two fold. So zero gain there. Actually a loss. As for no raises that’s not true. I get you think insurance costs going up have taken away any raise but you’d need to rethink your math. A 4 percent per hour raise is significantly more than a 10 % raise in insurance. If ins is 100 per month 10percent makes it 110 per month. 4 percent of 40 is 1.60 an hour. You can multiply the rest. Believe me, I was around when there actually were ZERO raises in the early 2000s. And around for real raises in the 90s.
Personally for fun I looked at the health marketplace just to see what it would cost to purchase on my own…around 1300/month for me alone for comparable coverage but with 2 times higher deductible. No thanks.

@b3
My mistake..have that backwards…75 and out was on my brain. Got two different scenarios…the 55 for penalty free and age plus time equaling 75

@ay

So 55 year olds are quitting so they can cash their pension instead of letting it accrue more..

Reasons to leave
1) lazy coworkers
2) ignorant lazy know it all coworkers
3) cr-p managers
4) Lumen is selling off mass markets
5) Lumen wants to replace internal employees with contractors
6) driver facing cameras
7) not afraid to be self employed
8) taking winters off!
9) again horrible lazy know it all Bosses pet coworkers!
10) not actually getting a raise in disposable income in 15 years!

If you’ve actually been her 25 years you’d know that we went from 2006 to 2016 with no actual raise and the raises we’ve gotten since then were off set by higher insurance and taxes.. so next question will your cr-p lumen pension from age 55 on actually grow faster than a 4% inflation rate.. it’s kind of impossible to out grow inflation when the Bond rates that pensions are invested in are only paying around 4%.. inflation is going to eat up your pension increases! And after lumen sell of US west and then splits the pension in half to go with the employees that it sells off it will be worth even less,

@ay you do know that Central office techs are now being held responsible for measuring and going out to drive the “toll fiber” routes to find cuts on inter office fiber! Once they find the cut contractors come and fix it!

why would anyone with 25 plus years whos over 50 years old want to take their pension out and come back to contract? You do know thats the number to get your pension penalty free right? If youre for real you know that, right?

Wrong.. you have to have turned 55 years of age in the year you separate from the company in order to get the pension penalty free!

@ay 4 retired copper splicers from Minnesota came to Des Moines last week did a maintenance section throw in the underground!

Retired Fiber splicer from Omaha came to marshal town iowa the other day and did a cut fiber, lots of retired techs go to work for the locate service because it’s easy work, for ok pay, with winters off.. they know exactly what’s going on!

I’ve personally talked to retired Design tech who are going around fixing established Ds1 service for a major grocery store warehouse in Boone Iowa . I know this because they need help finding a repeater… the after hours duty supervisor gave them my cell number thinking that I knew where it was

Just because you personally don’t know something doesn’t mean it doesn’t actually happen!

@ak
Huh. I see alot of kickback jobs from contractors they wont do because its too hard or will take too much time. And i havnt seen a single ex union member who's come back as a contractor. Only one that was about to get fired or was nervous about getting fired for his numbers. But he only had 4 years and no pension to speak of at that point. Thats on the I and R side though. Different story in power and air. Practically every day inhouse has to go back and fix a contractor job due to customer request. In my area 2 contract companies got dismissed for their work. Down to one now and theyre only supplying about 10 techs.
And really, why would anyone with 25 plus years whos over 50 years old want to take their pension out and come back to contract? You do know thats the number to get your pension penalty free right? If youre for real you know that, right? So 55 year olds are quitting so they can cash their pension instead of letting it accrue more, giving up their seniority and vacation and benefits to come back and be contractors..uh huh. ok.
Maybe only if they want to be nomad contract fiber splicers. Thats it.

@aa .. when a current union member says I won’t do this or I won’t do that… (which is all the time)

management will just send a contractor because they can.. whole lot of retired techs are now Double Dipping contractors!

Which is why I was surprised at how quickly the Dist 7 cwa contract was settled..

@OP
Are contractors really providing results or are they just cheaper in numbers?