Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

Flick was on point with this one. And, yes, the lack of success of the hubs, Tipsord's baby, is one of the big reasons. Tipsord sold the board a bill of goods and now they are scrambling to try to make the hubs work. They did not anticipate that people wouldn't be flocking to work in those high-cost, urban areas. They did not anticipate that they would have to pay much higher wages to compete with other employers. So, now they are moving more and more work from Corp in an attempt to get more people working in the hubs since current employees have to move or lose their jobs. If you say you are willing to move to a hub, you can probably keep a job, but if you want to stay in Bloomington you have a good chance of losing your career after 20 or 30 years of service.

Let me call the waaaaaambulance.

While your mouth was open making that obnoxious sound, I took a sh-- in it.

Give me your opinions are the hubs really working? Is more veg corporate technology roles to the hubs something we have seen success with? The last time I checked the locals weren’t lining up in droves to take a State Farm job. The millennial don’t even know who State Farm is! Not unless they happened to see an old sticker on the bumper of their grandparents classic car.

This company can go to hell. The employees fault that theyre " overstaffed". The employees actually held a gun to their bosses head to get raises? Get out while you can. Youre being treated like $#^+

Let me call the waaaaaambulance.

Slantagraph could no longer ignore it since major media elsewhere was scooping them. Now maybe they'll do a REAL piece about the number of people let go over the last few years, along with their age distribution.

Hi (wave of hand) Proximity rep here. For the past 30 years I have been out in the field, far from the Mecca that is Bloomington keeping the promise that our agents made when the policy was sold. Since 1995 I have been living a dual life. On the one hand I have been working a job that I loved, while trying to keep the factors in my other hand from creeping into my day-to-day life. The other hand contains the fears and uncertainty fed to me on a constant basis that my job was in jeopardy and I would have to leave the company that I loved. I have watched as Auto Bi was centralized and friends lost their jobs or moved. Then Fire Bi centralized and more friends left. Since then there has been a constant erosion of the remaining positions until we are now just a thin remnant of what we used to be. Oh, we try and fulfill the promise. Most of us. But the loyalty to the company and the drive to serve the customer has been eroded by the lack of loyalty from the company. The conditions we now work under are stress filled and customer service has taken a back seat to meeting metrics.

So now having gutted just about everything else, Corporate has turned on Bloomington. Unfortunately it appears that no one in Bloomington has been paying attention for the past 23 years, preferring instead to think that cuts will never happen to them. Surprise! Now that it has started, don't think for a minute that this is the end. I watched this play out in the field and I can easily see where this will go. Right now they are using smoke and mirrors to say that while 1200 Systems jobs are being cut, they are adding other jobs for a net decrease of 500. The new jobs are not comparable and y'all will hate the claim central positions! No, I can easily see large swaths of general departments gutted, with those people either replaced with technology, positions moved, or filled with externals.

As I was told after one of the many re-orgs I have gone through - "Welcome to the new normal" and I don't think it will be nearly as nice as the old Normal...

To: G.J. Mecherle

Founder, State Farm

Address: Somewhere in the universe

Dear George,

You’ve been away now for more than 65 years and you’re probably busy Up There. That’s why it occurs to me you might not have a lot of time to read The Pantagraph, or access Facebook, and I don’t know how good the Wi-Fi is Up There.

So I thought I’d drop you a line.

Things are a little odd down here in Bloomington-Normal, your beloved home for almost all of your 84 years.

Don’t worry, G.J.! Your great company is still hugely successful. It is so successful I just read it had an operating loss of $1.7 BILLION last year … but STILL made a nice profit.

No, this note is about other things.

G.J., remember way back in ‘22 when you launched State Farm because insurance companies from big cities, in your words, “did not understand the needs of rural drivers,” especially farmers? Remember how you said State Farm’s role was to serve rural America?

Well, here’s a funny thing, G.J. — the company is now moving more and more to (are you sitting down, G.J.?) the very big cities you founded your company against.

It has opened “hubs” in Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix!

It is moving all sorts of employees out of here.

“For Sale” signs are up.

That magnificent "skyscraper" in downtown Bloomington that you oversaw in its construction (mercy, please remain seated here, G.J.) has been vacated. It's empty, all 13 floors.

Group photos posted on personal pages of Facebook of the people retiring, realigning or being asked to move have far more people in them than your entire hometown of Merna!

Last weekend, there even was a big ad in the paper, placed by a real estate agent in Phoenix, suggesting to all those moving to Arizona that hiring her might be a good move in advance of their move.

As I say, G.J., it’s crazy!

State Farm says its reason for the hubs are because millennials “don’t want to move to cold-weather, smaller cities like Bloomington anymore” and that they need the “cutting-edge” to further succeed. But I guess my question is this: Wasn’t your company quite successful when it just had Bloomington-based corporate employees? In fact, didn’t the problems begin once it opened the hubs, in those big cities that you said your company needed to rail against?

As for Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix — they're all fine cities — but no place is Nirvana.

Traffic in all three is horrendous. That seems a bit coincidental for an auto insurer.

Atlanta? A nice place for the climate, it nonetheless is atop U.S. murder capitals; it has such a prodigious amount of pollen, on a sultry summer day in “Hot-lanta,” you need a snow brush to clean off your car; and criminy, G.J., they like sweet tea down there!

Dallas? It’s wonderfully cosmopolitan but is mass asphalt, a Parking Lot Paradise. If you talk too fast down there, as we Northerners can do, they don’t understand you. And G.J., there are more extended-cab trucks in Dallas than should ever be legal!

Phoenix? As the home of “Good Neighbors,” you coincidentally never see your neighbors there — everyone stays inside in the air conditioning. Car batteries last only a year because it's so hot.

G.J. — here is a personal story I will tell only you: About 20 years ago, offered a job at a newspaper there, I flew down. Loved the area. The real estate prices were similar to B-N’s. But here’s what happened to me on a 109-degree July day in Tempe, a Phoenix 'burb — I forgot to crack my rental car’s windows. In an hour, the windshield literally exploded. I really needed my State Farm insurance that day!

Yes, G.J., I am writing to you out of selfish concern, for a town I have come to love — your own Bloomington-Normal.

It, too, has its problems, but also the shortest commute time in America and one of the lowest murder rates in the U.S. It’s a good family town and our values remain solid. To quote that book about you, “The Farmer From Merna,” your own two "main virtues" in life and business were “personal integrity and honesty” and we are pretty good at both.

Anyway, that is my report, G.J., in case you had not heard.

Give Abe the High-5 for me and thank God for all our blessings Down Here.

P.S. They basically got rid of that “Like A Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There” slogan a couple years ago and I now worry that I know why — in 10 years, your company might not be our neighbor anymore. That, kind sir, in my own singular mind, would be a huge, short-sighted, awful mistake.

P.P.S. Oh, their new slogan, G.J.? “Here To Help Life Go Right.” We certainly hope so.

Flick is at flick@pantagraph.com

It reminds me of a mom and pop started business that they put their heart and soul into it.

Then kids take over and gradually start tarnishing what ma and pa started.

They look for ways to profit with as little as possible exertion on their part.

Then the grand kids take over and the values, principals , ethics

and pride are just gone. I see Tipsord and his board as the grandkids in this.

There are unicorns! They really do exist! This belief has been confirmed by the mere fact that the Slantagraph actually printed this!

Really surprised that the Pantagraph allowed him to write this.

Even more surprised they printed it.

Truth and Pantagraph are questionable. Sure wish GJ was here now.