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Antiwork

Owners got in a personal fight and ended 200 careers

So about 10 years ago I worked for a USAF parts supplier that performed repairs on old military aircraft. The company had been around for about 40 years and it had moved to a small heavily minority area about 10 years before (for government contract reasons) and the low cost of labor. It was privately owned by two very wealthy former real estate lawyers who got rich brokering condo sales in Florida. Everybody loved them and talked so much about how they cared for everyone and worked with people when sick and stuff. Almost all of the employees lived close by and had no previous experience but they got these supposedly great jobs so about 200 well paying jobs fixing aircraft popped up. Most of the people never worked in the aircraft industry anywhere else and while they developed skills at their specific trades almost nobody had outside experience, education,…


So about 10 years ago I worked for a USAF parts supplier that performed repairs on old military aircraft. The company had been around for about 40 years and it had moved to a small heavily minority area about 10 years before (for government contract reasons) and the low cost of labor.

It was privately owned by two very wealthy former real estate lawyers who got rich brokering condo sales in Florida. Everybody loved them and talked so much about how they cared for everyone and worked with people when sick and stuff. Almost all of the employees lived close by and had no previous experience but they got these supposedly great jobs so about 200 well paying jobs fixing aircraft popped up. Most of the people never worked in the aircraft industry anywhere else and while they developed skills at their specific trades almost nobody had outside experience, education, official certifications, etc. They were all certified within the company only and had very specific skills and experience to the primary contract which was a 10 year long $100million contract. Just as the last 10 year contract was coming to a close we were working hard to get the next 10 year contract finalized. It was a sure thing as nobody else did what we did. Everyone was working hard to make sure all was good. We all worked for a private employer with a nice long term contract and we were good at our jobs and we had a few weeks before the award was expected.

Then on a Monday morning at 9am (on my 1 year anniversary on the job) they called a general meeting with all employees to announce that the owners had irreconcilable differences and they decided to DISSOLVE the company effective immediately. Not sell, not wait and see, just done. They said get your private stuff, tools, etc and get out.

I went to my manager who was a VP for the WTF talk and he said the two owner literally got in a yelling fight a month or so ago and both just said fuck it. That was it.

The VPs all tried to get funding together to buy the assets to start a new company but there was no time and the contract was yanked away. Over the next year they sold the tooling, and spares, and materials for a few $million to pay off debts and stuff but overnight almost 200 people lost their livelihoods over a fight between two rich guys that didn't give a shit about any of the people that had worked for them for decades.

I knew lots of people that were making 50-125K with only HS degrees that immediately found out they had no marketable skills, certs, education. I ran into them over the next several months working service and retail jobs.

TLDR: Private owners got in an argument with each other and just dissolved the decades old company overnight and fired everyone.

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