In The Bunker: Beyond the Last Day (Day 3)

T-Shirt graphic from zazzle.com

You know, this plant was shuttered once before, back in the 'nineties. Yep. It actually came back from the dead and it could, I suppose, happen again.

In a rare employee meeting, the VP of Operations urged everyone to "hang in there" because the company would be providing "severance pay" for those who stayed put until they were terminated.

The veterans of the last shut-down remembered that they got one week's pay for every year of company service. Since there were people on the chopping block with ten, twelve or more years of service, this sounded pretty good. Heck, 12 weeks is three months of pay, right?

Folks who wanted an early out were told not to put their severance package at risk by quitting.

Well, the axe fell for the majority of folks and the severance package payments started to be handed out last week.

Guess what? They found out that the severance pay this time is being handled a little bit differently this time.

One week of pay is being awarded to folks with one to five years of service.

One additional week of pay is being awarded to people who have six or more years in with the company.

That's it. A maximum of two weeks pay, regardless of total years worked.

Since I only have twenty months in the plant, I am not expecting anything more than one week, so it is no big whoop to me, personally.

The bigger issue is how corporate was vague about the severance program and then kept silent while the rank and file jumped to their conclusion based on the last time such payments were made. Since nothing was actually said about the severance package details they have air-tight "plausible deniabilty."

Sadly, this is all too typical of the corporate culture, here.

I'm just waiting to see if Craigsy-Boy encounters some sort of nefarious screw-job from my beneficent corporate overlords.