This happened to my brother-in-law, but he can no longer share it so I will.
My brother-in-law, Jerry, worked for Raytheon in Wichita. During his years of working there, he was exposed to toxic fumes from the plastics and foams he was handling and he eventually developed Parkinson's disease at a young age (early 40's).
At about the time he was prepared to retire because of his condition, Raytheon announced they'd sell their Wichita plant. When this was announced,the workers, who had large amounts of vacation time in their leave banks, asked Raytheon's HR if they'd be able to cash out their vacation before officially being laid off. HR said "Of course...It's yours to use as you please." Fourty-eight hours later, nearly everyone was laid off. When the employees tried to use their vacation time, HR said "Sorry, you must have misunderstood. Only those employees we're keeping during the ownership transition may use their vacation time. Additionally, vacation leave must have been
approved at least one week ago (before the sale and layoffs were announced)." My brother-in-law lost $12K worth of leave; despite his worsening condition and impeding disability it will never be paid out to him or to any of his co-workers. Thirty days later, the production group Jerry was on was officially moved to Mexico and a new shop was set up there. Six months after the move, Raytheon called Jerry and requested his shop notes (these are notes that the workers took on optimum machine settings and other helpful hints). The company had the shop notes of nearly every other worker in the shop, because they had made the workers check in their company-issued tool chests the day before everyone was outsourced, and management had gone through the tool chests and retrieved everyone's notes. Raytheon didn't have Jerry's notes because he didn't use a company-issued tool chest; he had his own which he took home with him every night. Raytheon stated they would pay out all the leave they owed Jerry, plus another $20K, if he would surrender his shop notes and travel down to Mexico to help train the new shop workers. Apparently, even after 6 months of training and translation of the shop notes into Spanish the new shop workers still couldn't get the job done and most of the parts coming from the shop were failing QC. Jerry, knowing that their promises weren't worth the paper they were(n't) written on, savored his moment of sweet revenge as he told them "HELL, NO!" and hung up.
POST A COMMENTfreedomringer(07/06/2006)
That story makes me proud to be an American!!! Companies that sell their employees for cheaper labor are getting just that, a cheap product. Stupid is as stupid does and that goes for production. Stupid employees make stupid products. Hell the local ARC makes a better more solid product than most products that come in from Mexico. I am not blasting ethnicity, I know many latin americans that are at the top of their fields in Science and Medicine, I am just trying to explain that nothing can beat the hard workers of America. I am sorry about your brother-in-law, he was a credit to his family and country.
me too(07/06/2006)
RIGHT ON! This is great to hear! I did a similar thing where I refused to train my offshore replacement but this is even better! I used to get so frustrated because I saw too many people in my field lying down and training offshore workers. It really pissed me off! But now I am seeing more people holding on to their dignity and self-respect and not selling out! Again, I say "RIGHT ON!" Thanks for sharing the story and tell your brother-in-law he's got big fans out there cheering for him!
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