So, I work for a large defense contractor in the US. You'll have heard of us if you've walked into an airport in the NoVA/DC area, or have ever served in the military.
We support the Department of Defense and a bunch of other government agencies.
The way that many defense contracts work is that the government and the company enter into a multi-year contract to provide (in my case anyway) IT and Cybersecurity/InfoSec support to a part of the DoD and/or the IC.
Those contracts are usually for one year, with an option to renew every year for a set number of years.
My company's multi-year contract with the DoD was set to end in April, but there was a long negotiation process to move to a new multi-year contact, which resulted eventually in a new contract award last month.
Fast forward to last week, and we all (there are about 500 of us on this contract) get a notice to attend a mandatory town hall meeting over Zoom.
In that meeting, we're informed that someone somewhere messed something up, and that we'd all need to accept a 70% pay cut in order to stay on the contract. This is the same company that sends us endless emails telling us how much they value us as people and and assets, and that could, if they wanted to, easily eat the cost of their screw-up and protect us as employees rather than asking us to eat the cost of their error.
Needless to say, virtually nobody is accepting this insulting offer, and what is inevitably going to happen is that the company, due to attrition, will not be able to perform the duties of the contract and will likely be financially punished to a much greater degree than if they'd just paid us.
Thankfully, by the nature of the roles, every one of us is highly certified (most have a high-level IT certs like CISSP or CASP) and have Top Secret clearances, so it won't be hard for many of us to find work elsewhere.