Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Re: Needed laugh and Bush II economic policies

Now I'm NOT being sarcastic. Improve the bottom line, are you kidding me?? My ex-employer was recording record earnings every quarter for the last 2 to 3 years I was there. How much more did they need to improve the bottom line?? And "outsourced" is a term used by those of us losing our jobs, but technically, they weren't. They were moved to another country, but still being done by employees (newly hired of course) of the company. Thus, said company can say publicly (though not 1 word in any print media that I have ever seen has mentioned what is going on at said company) that they haven't cut any jobs. Which is true. All they have done is gotten rid of American employees (with American salaries, American benefits and American retirement plans) and hired people in other countries (and given them a much lower salary, very few benefits and I can only imagine what type of retirement program they get). But I guess I should consider myself lucky - I got a severance package. I heard from a friend yesterday that another group (in Houston) is having 127 of the 147 positions moved overseas and that NO packages will be offered. There is some loyalty for you.

And speaking of loyality, the reason that I, and my fellow workers, had the idea/ideal that we were employees for life is because we were told as much. Even up to the time that we got the announcement about our work location, I was told in my annual review (like I was told in every one) that as long as my performance remained where it was, I would retire at said company.
Guess it was my fault I actually believed them.

And finally, about "maximum return for investors". When the big guy came to announce what was going to happen, he took questions and answers. During his spiel, he repeatedly used that phrase..."we are doing what is good for the stockholders"....."we are doing what is best for the investors"...yadda, yadda, yadda. So when Q&A rolled around, I asked him a question. My question was something along the lines of...

"Can you tell me exactly which stockholders you are looking out for? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that everyone in this room, everyone here that is losing their job, is a stockholder and while I don't pretend to speak for them, I would doubt that many of us think this is a good thing. I can tell you that I am a stockholder and I don't think that whomever made this decision was looking out for my best interests."

He didn't like my question and dismissed it by saying to me that the company looks out for all stockholders equally. Yea, right.

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