Letter to the Avaya Board of Directors...
It was only a couple of years ago when Alan Masarek first came to Avaya. How naive we were at the time, feeling relief and such encouragement as Alan spoke of his plans to save the company. Even then, he spoke of the cash cornucopia, the long-standing source of minimal expense revenue aka, the installed base. How proud we career Avayans were as the ones who actually built the installed based with many long days and endless Friday night and weekend cutovers. We worked in "Avaya time," where the workdays were a minimum of 12 hours, but often 14, 15, or 16 hours without overtime pay. Still, we took pride of our work and strived for customer delight in everything we did.
Now 2 years later, hundreds, perhaps thousands of us who built the coveted installed base have received our 6-hour notice of termination, and have nothing now but memories of the company we loved and the investment we felt we were making towards our collective future.
Little did we know 2 years ago that Alan would take the output of our hard work and sell it to a Financial Partner so he and others could jump ship with their million-dollar packages while the ones who actually did the work, head to the unemployment line.
Avaya told us in our termination package, the action to terminate employees was part of their “Go-to-Customer function and Avaya’s strategic plan for innovation and Growth,” as stated by Alan during our June 2024 “All Employee Meeting.” If Avaya knew in June, why then were career employees given only 6-hours’ notice of termination in July and August?
Clearly Avaya has the advantage against any individual who challenges their action. I would go broke from legal fees trying to win my job back or at least a fair severance package. However, there is something fundamentally wrong in your termination of so many, including me a 72-year-old man with 47 years of loyal and faithful service without good reason. We understood when you took away our vacation entitlements and more recently your 401k contributions. The individuals you terminated on July 23, 2024 and before, went without bonuses and pay increase cycle after cycle. Some of us even invested monetarily in Avaya as our financial outlook seemed to unravel. I did so and despite many assurances from Alan, I personally lost $7000.00 when Avaya filed bankruptcy.
The installed base has been very good to Avaya and kept the ship afloat on many occasions. I therefore urge Avaya to spin off the installed base and return in to all the fathers, mothers, sons and daughters your heartlessly terminated in 2024.