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EDS Layoff Timing Very Costly to Workers

from the bad-timing dept

Mon, Jul 29th 2002 12:49am — Mike Masnick

theodp writes "EDS picked a pivotal day to lay off 300 workers. Had it let them go just a day earlier, on July 1, EDS would have had to pay the severance package it promised when it acquired the employees as part of its purchase of a Sabre unit. But because EDS cut their jobs on July 2, the day after the one-year severance contract expired, the former Sabre workers will receive 2-4 weeks of salary instead of a month's salary plus as much as a month's additional pay for each year served. The one day delay reduced a laid-off Sabre employee's severance from $68,000 to $3,000 (NY Times, registration required). All EDS employees released on the morning of July 2 were also told that their medical coverage would end at midnight. EDS, who paid CEO Dick Brown more than $55 million last year, says the former Sabre workers' severance agreement had no bearing on the timing of the cuts, although an e-mail message EDS management sent to supervisors on June 28 said that "no separations or separation meetings should occur prior to July 2nd." "

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8 Comments

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Withheld, 29 Jul 2002 @ 6:33am

More costly than the article says...
A couple of good friends of mine in Toronto
were amongst these layoffs. Were they deadwood?
Nope! EDS layed off it's bid and proposal team!
"We're not in need of any new business right now,
we'll outsource your positions when needed."

Yah EDS, I'll be buying your stock real soon...
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SB, 29 Jul 2002 @ 9:59am

THINK, MCFLY
If these morons' TERMINATIONS were DELAYED, in order to get around some severance rule, that means they WERE KEPT ON THE PAYROLL LONGER THAN WOUKD HAVE BEEN. FREE MONEY, IDIOTS

You should be THANKING EDS for preserving your job for another 6 months. It's clear you would have been CUT long ago otherwise.

I'm sure the INCOME from staying on the payroll, in many cases, exceeded the pidling severance they'd have gotten anyways.

Of course, its always easiest to cite the extreme 68,000 hard luck case. I bet 90% of workers made out by staying on the payroll

INGRATES
MORONS
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2002 @ 11:02am

GREEDY BS
What a bunch of GREEDY CORPORATE BULLSHIT. It's breach of contract, basically, to weasel out of paying severance that the company had agreed to pay. It's even worse that they LIE and say that the date of the layoffs had nothing to do with the severance deal. I think eventually people are going to get SICK of this money-grubbing BULLSHIT, and you're going to see mobs of angry folks going door-to-door and dragging these execs out of their offices and through the streets!
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2002 @ 4:14pm

Why murder should be legal
It's people like that Dick Brown (what an apropriate name) that the world could due without. This whore was paid $55 million dollars to do... what. Instead of trying to find a way to survive on say $50 million dollars a year he thought it would be best to single handedly destroy 300 families in this economy. He deserves to die.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2002 @ 4:15pm

Re: THINK, MCFLY
Troll.
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Dick Brown, 20 Aug 2007 @ 6:58pm

Layoffs
EDS is at it again. Laying off 600 workers at Weyerhaeuser due to losing the account to rival HP.

HP will provide support with 600 workers from India.

WARN notices are comming out this week.
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in touch, 3 Sep 2008 @ 10:42am

Re: THINK, MCFLY
Oh yea, EDS keeps deadwood on the payrole all the time. Moron
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james, 26 Mar 2010 @ 11:07am

EDS has such a bad reputation for bullying management, lying sales people, non delivery etc. I am just amazed that any company would want to do business with them. I am still surprised that HP wanted them, but if HP are as bad as EDS with their people management, then they deserve each other. The pity of it is that it is always the people at the lower levels that get the pain. Management looks out for itself, not its staff or customers, despite the rhetoric. People at EDS are not assets, just expenses.
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