Due to concerns about age discrimination, if you are over 40, companies have to give you additional time to consider the severance documents before signing away your rights. http://www.troutmansanders.com/severance-agreements-for-employees-over-40-understanding-the-older-workers-benefit-protection-act-06-04-2012/
17 replies (most recent on top)
Disney workers banded together over jobs being given/transferred to H1Bs, they filed a classaction lawsuit. If WD also follows the same policy of retaining all the younger H1Bs and International Students on student work permits (2-3 years), and firing all older/senior workers, maybe the older workers who are laid off should protest too. Age bias in tech is not a myth but a reality. But is it true that signing HR documents will nullify chances of filing lawsuit? So one has to stay away from signing those HR docs (and decline severance too?) in order to be able to file a complaint?
If they do as they have in the past the WARN act won't give you advance warning, but yet they are still abiding by it. This is because they have kept folks on the payroll for two months after being laid off (but you don't come in to work anymore). This has been in addition to any severance pay.
WDC did not handle the layoff in a professional way. You guys should not sign any documentation for HR. Instead you should contact the lawyer. WDC will pay a big price for doing this. From the following link, there is no layoff after last Nov.
http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WARN.htm
You guys can make a judgement here. Good Luck!
You guys need to start a media campaign to change corporate structure back. You aren't going to get enough visibility here. Good luck to you all - it isn't fun out here in ex-WDCland.
Dear manager/director/vp/coo/ceo, are you happy and feel lucky that people being laid off have to work to the last minute without taking any vacation hours?
"There are about to be layoff and many here are worried about vacation????" -- very interesting, this opinion is exactly company is trying to apply to all of us. Just keep working hard until the last day.
The desire and talk of taking vacation is only because many engineers are sure to loose their jobs; yet they have to continue to slog and submit status on bugs and fixes, until possibly the last date of their employment; managers continue to ask updates as if everything is life as usual. No one wants to work anymore without the assurance of their jobs. It is a horrible feeling to work in the month before you know you are more likely to be terminated. Yet, with management not revealing anything, people are just showing up, unsure of whether "it" will be this week or the next.
There are about to be layoff and many here are worried about vacation????
I am a hourly worker and have over 200 hours of PTO don't they still have to pay me those hours if I get laid off?
The irony is that many people are trying to show up for work to safeguard their job and show that they are still relevant and needed and are afraid of taking vacation right now. WD by keeping mum on the dates and timeframe of layoff, is just adding to employees not taking time off. The so called IMO Updates are an eyewash. No one cares which tool is going to be available when - period! Everyone wants to know when is the big day? No noise from the management on when exactly the rank and file will be informed, despite the fact the people are worried. Managers continue to make engineers work and solve bugs and fixes and such.
Layoff itself is understood by everyone, but wd is very wicked to layoff people who have not got any chance to take vacation hours. Employees may cruelly retaliate company and its management's wickedness after getting layoff. Wd has 19b to buy Sandisk but no money to pay vacation hours and does not want people to take vacation before layoff.
I'm a manager. I don't know who on my team is going to be laid off.
My manager told me he really don't know. Well, not sure if it's truth.
Do managers know who will stay and who will get out? Why are they being so quiet and why is nothing being announced? When is the big day and when will the rank and file get to know if they stay or are kicked out?
Is April 1st the bug day for the lowest level of engineers then ?
What should you do if you get layoff before April 1st and haven't got any chance to take single day vacation due to the tight schedule of dayly support?