Thread regarding General Motors layoffs

To call a person who is on vacation and lay them off over the phone is terrible. How can anyone justify this? I am glad I left on my own before this happened.

It could be been done less vocally and over time, if time wasn't an issue. Time is an issue, and a very big one. GM 2020 is when GM was to get the house in order, and I don't know if they are still on that timeline now. Things pop up, things happen.

What I refer to timing, is getting your house in order before recession hits. We are not yet there, but we are running into the end innings. The layoffs of today where shouted from the rooftops, and to me that reads red flags in the economy. They will tell you it's preemptive action while times are good, but they won't tell you it's in preparation for when times are bad. Bad is right around the corner. See how that reads differently? Wording matters.

LOVE YOUR JOB BUT DON'T LOVE YOUR COMPANY BECAUSE YOU MAY NOT KNOW WHEN YOUR COMPANY STOPS LOVING YOU -- ABDUL KALAM

I think the punchline is understanding who the top executives actually work for - investors.

Including investors who would like to do things like sell off US manufacturing, change the name and focus only on things like OnStar and Autonomous vehicle back office.

People keep saying this could have been handled better. I've been wondering how I might do it better... took a while but one idea would have been to issue notices that "you're not cut" in parallel with issuing the "you're cut" notices to expedite feelings of relief... however, the problem with this is it would have had to be rolled out as a big list of who's not cut and you know that would leak.

So I agree it could have been less painful but I'm not seeing exactly how.

As early 2016 we started to notice contractors laid off from our department, and this was a time of record bonuses. Many mentions were made among the salaried ranks that this was wrong. It was said more than once they'd be happy to reduce their bonus to a more reasonable level, to keep people working. Of course that would be impossible, yet the humanity and sympathy of your peers started to show through.

There is more humanity, team, and family at the lowest level levels of employee, than a ounce of person that operates at the top. At those levels, it's only a catch phrase.

Your right about what a company is and every staff meeting or all people meeting it was always stressed that I was either a asset or liability never part of am organization with lofty goals such as zero, crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion. The company never stressed a shared commitment in the effort to create the best possible products but always that I was nothing more than an asset or liability to creating those products. I am not so naive to admit having swallowed any kool-aid that I was ever more than an asset or liability but in 2018 the company did make a profit off many of the assets that have now become liabilities. It is insulting that you would tell me that I should not be angry, the company speaks out both sides of it's mouth. I accept that but reserve my right to be angry. I don't agree that 90% of the people would have hit the door if asked to take a pay cut or work 2 months for free. In fact myself and many of my colleagues typically worked 50 hours a week. If you define a standard work week at 40 that is 500 hours or a little over 3 months worked for free. People were not walking out the door for this. I hope that your not trying to say that a company does not play the "we are family card" to squeeze everything out of it's assets until they are liabilities. In fact the company played the we are family card when it sought a bailout from the American Family

Fine. Then don't make up s____y rules like 401-K getting vested only after 3 years. You may be working for HR. Why don't you fire people when they are 1 week away from completing 3 years with GM?