Thread regarding Enbridge Inc. layoffs

Putting Into Perspective

I know this is not a popular opinion but working for a publicly listed company like Enbridge gives you zero job security. And this is not unique to Enbridge, just look at the level/amount of layoffs that had been happening since last year across many industries with Tech sector getting the most layoff. Within oil and gas, Suncor trim 1,500 of its workers not too long ago and like Enbridge they’re not exactly losing money.

Companies hire people to make money and they will continue to streamline processes, continuously re-organize, optimize manpower to be more profitable. If management think they can operate with less manpower then it’s called efficiency. Employees are just easy target, a low hanging fruit.

If you look at it this way, you will feel less bad about yourself. I know a lot of good employees who had been laid off since 2015. Don’t take it personally but you really are just a number when time comes they need to trim down the head count.

You can however be proactive by getting your finances in order in case you get laid off. Severance is nice and can help tremendously but you have to be prepared also for the possibility of landing another job with either higher pay, lower pay or not getting a job until 1 or 2 years later. I am saying this because somehow I was able to track previous colleagues who either had gone up the ladder in their current jobs, few had took a job that pays considerably less and some who took quite a while before landing another job. One of them got a job after 3yrs, after losing his properties and going into depression.

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| 2471 views | | 17 replies (last February 21, 2024) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1r9aAatp

17 replies (most recent on top)

Nothing to do with "working for a publicly listed company". Even private companies hire and fire. It's the life cycle of business. Look at the tech sector, it's bo-m and bust over and over again.

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Post ID: @2kpw+1r9aAatp

"Management think macro and you don’t do the same"

  • D-mbest comment ever. You think management thinks? Nope. Sheep. Management are sheep.

If managers 'think' - then why are is this even necessary? All that money for 'macro level thinking' and the company is still doing badly. A lot of good that thinking did.

"You are emotionally charged already coming here but management makes business decisions"

  • Maybe some people are. I trust those people more than anyone who makes this type of comment. I always find it funny that having emotions are criticized.

Ever sat in a meeting with directors / execs where this is a disagreement. Kindergartners are more mature than these folks and handle disagreements with more class.

As far as I can see there was no real concrete answers given to the question of 200M in savings are

Yeaaaa righttttt ... wink wink ....management 'thinking' at work. LOL.

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Post ID: @2jvy+1r9aAatp

I can't tell if you're deliberately misunderstanding me. "Unchanged" in the sense that what we are talking about does not change them. The adjustment of the workforce does not change the utility cost profile, nor the cost of borrowing. And the company is not reducing the workforce to pay those bills. Those bills are covered.

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Post ID: @1kfv+1r9aAatp

“The costs for utilities and interest are unchanged”

What do you mean by unchanged? Are you living under the rock? Central Bank increased the interest rates by 10x, how do you think it impacts any company’s debt service cost?

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Post ID: @1ewk+1r9aAatp

All I can say, look how many people in offices came back as they should be since that eamil came out. Attendance, efficiency is the secret word now, what will make you survive these lay offs. Be independent, come in the way they told you to come in, be nice to others and cooperate, and you will be fine

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Post ID: @1ubj+1r9aAatp

Well laying off people to have cash is good, they have more money to pay dividends.

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Post ID: @1neo+1r9aAatp

"Reducing manpower does free up money and can be used for high ticket items like utility costs and interest costs on loans."

The costs for utilities and interest are unchanged, and the money allocated to those expenditures is still allocated to them. It doesn't need to be "freed up". It's the basic cost of doing business. It's baked in. Such is the nature of operational expenses.

Enbridge has been at several points in its history "cash poor". Once nearly catastrophically so. You can be flush with assets and still bankrupt. You need liquidity to run a company. Reducing manpower helps a company remain liquid. A healthy balance sheet has cash reserves - reserves in the pipeline history that are typically higher than ENB has held.

Those reserves do not need to be pushed back into the company in investment. It is a good thing if they are not.

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Post ID: @1srq+1r9aAatp

Reducing manpower does free up money and can be used for high ticket items like utility costs and interest costs on loans.

Enbridge is an energy company but does not generate its own electricity, it pays for its power and water too. Also that $200M will just be gobbled up by interest costs.

Management think macro and you don’t do the same. You are emotionally charged already coming here but management makes business decisions. See why this is hard for everyone? It’s coz management and employees will not always be 100% in alignment. And that’s just how it works, if not everyone will be in management.

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Post ID: @1urs+1r9aAatp

"Please someone explain how 200M is being redployed back into the business? It was not clear from the emails about "necessary" layoffs where these cost savings were to be deployed."

That's not how this works. That's the kind of thinking that gets people into credit trouble. "If I don't buy the mattress, that means I can buy the XBOX!" The point is NOT to spend the money at all, because that money doesn't exist yet. It's not sitting there in a lump waiting to be spent on wages. Operational expenses are not capital dollars. Eliminating positions doesn't free up money. It makes future cash flows less precarious.

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Post ID: @sya+1r9aAatp

Business fundamentals had changed and they will continue to change and it’s up to you how you wanna adapt to it or you wanna stop working for non profit companies. Almost all comments here that say “leave and/or look for work somewhere else” almost get downvoted all the time. Why? Because reality su-ks and the truth hurts. Most people come here already emotionally charged but management makes decisions based on business conditions and what they think is best for the business and/or for their own pockets and no emotions are put into it.

This is a harsh reality that shareholders come first and a huge portion of management compensation are based on stocks. Is it fair? No. Is it ethical? Questionable.

By the way you forgot to consider the actuarial of future payments of the Defined Benefits pension should they keep everyone up to retirement and guarantee the monthly payments until they die.

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Post ID: @jsu+1r9aAatp

"Shareholders Come First"

Yes - they do. And this is the problem. Shareholders were only part of the equation before, and most companies (not just enbridge) have started to ignore the customer, fundamental business 101, and employees. It as more balanced, and everyone benefited which allowed society as whole to progress and increase the quality of the greater good.

Are executives have failed at 70% of their responsibility. Exec's garner a large amount of their compensation from stocks. It is in their best interest to align here, and play the numbers as they benefit the most from keeping shareholders / stock price stable. This does not always equate to good run business.

I will hear the other persepctive though - These 650 layoffs assuming 130K median salary equals 84M. Pension / Benefts burden assuming 30% (which is the higher) equals another 25-30M. So 114M in cost savings.

I didn't hear in any announcements how this 114M savings this year is being redeployed to help us survive.

I'll even round up to 200M to allow for errors.

Please someone explain how 200M is being redployed back into the business? It was not clear from the emails about "necessary" layoffs where these cost savings were to be deployed.

Maybe I would take this pill a little better if these types of announcements were backed by empirical evidence?

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Post ID: @efk+1r9aAatp

Yeah you can shift your perspective on the other side but that doesn’t make the company change how they do things to please investors/shareholders. They still come first.

Yes your operating capacity is backed by long term contracts but you forgot the operating costs such as utilities (heating, water, electricity) all of which you have no control. That’s why the easiest cost to control is manpower. And like any other business Enbridge has loans to service, with higher interest rates everyone’s capacity to raise capital for new projects or money for operating funds is substantially diminished.

Doesn’t matter what you believe in, you either accept that this is what’s happening or you keep on thinking that any company will really take care of you until you retire but then you got blind sided when you suddenly got laid off.

This is not really a survival in a way bcoz Enbridge employees are still paid higher than industry average. What you do with your hard earned money, either you use it wisely or you squandered it hoping you never get laid off - that’s totally on you.

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Post ID: @hos+1r9aAatp

Interesting perspective - especially around the treatment of a corporation / likeness to a person.

Our pipes are full, backed by long term contracts. Some provinces we have a virtually monopoly - despite regulators and customers being fed up with our shenanigan.

Last year our payment rate of invoices was only 55% - any exec whom takes pride in that kind of result is a douche bad. What happens if I don’t pay half my bills in a given year? Credit ruined, lost home and most probably a horrible reputation.

The company still profited despite this …. Even thrived. Execs bragged in the media about how great they did to investors.

Some of these comments give the perception that this is about survival.

Wrong.

Shift your perspective a bit and see the other side.

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Post ID: @sbr+1r9aAatp

As you said on your reply “cheap labor”: that’s the reason why some of these processes/tasks are being outsourced. They pay them per process or per tasks done per service level agreements. If the service is horrible management will find another outsourcing company to move it. It still costs way less than keeping in house employees.

You have to understand that keeping in house employees costs way more, they’re not only paying you your base salary. With Enbridge pension, bonus, leave entitlements, medical/dental/life coverage and other benefits that’s an easy additional 30% on top of your base pay. Whereas outsourcing non critical work will cost the fraction of the cost. Again, understand the perspective that they’re running a business.

And this is not exactly an Enbridge thing only, 100% of the time businesses will do whatever they can to compete and survive. Trimming the manpower is a rather obvious choice than going under and losing all manpower.

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Post ID: @gnz+1r9aAatp

Paying millions to 3rd party companies who use cheap labor to do they same thing employees could have done? Most midstream companies are not run that way. Common sense doesn’t exist in Enbridge until cost reduction time.

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Post ID: @tju+1r9aAatp

Outsourcing is one of the ways to reduce costs. Take the example of Accounts Payable, it doesn’t matter how many complaints there are of how lousy it is but in the eyes of management the cost to process each invoice is way cheaper than keeping in house staff. A lot of people don’t understand this especially if you’re a front liner dealing directly with invoices and impacted with low quality work of contractors. They can lower the costs significantly and the pipelines still run. Do I support this? No but I don’t have to agree with this decision because I have no power to make one.

“Work life balance” is a myth until you understand that unless you stop trading “time for money” you will never fully achieve this. Your earning capacity and how you handle your finances might impact this though.

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Post ID: @cfr+1r9aAatp

The company has outsourced 50% of the work that employees are capable of doing to third party contractors. So are they getting bang for their buck? Work life balance is good

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Post ID: @tqq+1r9aAatp

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