I work for the office of a major moving company. We're the headquarters of a co-op and numerous smaller businesses work locally across the country to enable cross-country moves. The board of directors consists of the owners of several of the major agents and they call the shots.
I started Summer of 2017 after leaving the world of Substitute Teaching behind. Every time I have changed positions, it has not been by choice by by necessity: first time was when I was a seasonal employee and the season had ended, and then next time due to my manager getting fired and her director restructuring the team (which I'm convinced was really because the other guy doing my job didn't like me), and then the following time due to my team downsizing. I have managed each time to find another position with the company before my 2 weeks were up or be offered a specific one to switch to.
10 months ago, they let go of all of the staff in several departments that I guess they decided were redundant. This included the staff of two teams that I had worked under in previous positions. Only the core departments remained, the ones that were essential to keeping the company functional: IT, HR, Finance, Claims, Operations where I was, and a few others.
In August they put in a new rule stating that employees are no longer allowed to apply to work for our local branches or for branch employees to apply to work for headquarters while employed or for six months following our departure from our position. This was designed to prevent favoritism and stealing of employees between the branches and HQ after a lot of people had seen the warning signs and jumped ship. The exception was for lay offs, in which case you could apply immediately.
This morning I received a call from my teammate where she needed to transfer a call my way, but while she was on the phone, she received a message from a coworker friend of hers in another department who said she was just let go along with some other people in her department.
While I was on the call with the customer, my director called me for an unexpected Zoom meeting and I had to ignore the call twice since I was currently on the phone. I knew then I was likely getting fired and I started putting together a folder of my documents on my work laptop so that I could send them via Google Drive to myself before I lost access to the network.
Got off the phone and had to wait for him to get out of a meeting with someone else, which turned out to be the teammate who had transferred that call to me. Once he was done talking to her and she messaged me about being laid off, he called me again and the meeting started with him and an HR director.
I was right, I was getting the boot. They told me it would be effective immediately and I would have 30 minutes of access before they pulled my access. They said I would still “be considered an employee for 2 more weeks” and would get the next paycheck. I had three days of PTO on the schedule the next two weeks and they will not be reimbursing me for them since they fall into the 2 extra weeks. They emailed me a severance package which is going to offer 8 weeks of severance pay and I'm not sure what else yet.
Their reasoning for layoffs is that they are working on their 2024 budget and I guess there was too much money going to be paid to employees. Each year we were receiving between a 2% and 3% wage increase and sometimes a bonus but raises had been unheard of for years unless you changed positions and newer hires had a good chance of earning more money when they started than experienced employees.
20+ employees just lost their positions with no warning. I was working from home this week and have to take my equipment (laptop and badge at minimal) to the office and try to get my stuff from my desk at the same time. In previous firings, the managers had boxed up people's desks and mailed their stuff to them. Even when my now Sister in Law was fired (really stupid reason for that one too), they would not let me take her stuff to her. I'm hoping to avoid that, but it's probably going to happen to me.