#employeerights

Protect our jobs there are still layoff talks and job cuts being discussed

I know these are difficult times. To keep this thread useful, please comment only if you or someone you know has been laid off. This will help others understand the impact across teams and regions.

Please reply using the following format:

Team:
Region:
Number of people affected (if known):

I signed the general release on July 5 but up to this day no severance yet.

How can they justify layoffs when they given VSP end dates in2028

Looking for insight/testimonials about the severance package in Spain, what is and is not included in the salary reference for calculation, what the termination letter actually says, what kind of NDA they ask, etc.
Anything you can share will help a worried colleague. Thank you.

Unpaid closure for two weeks
Workers rushing to join unions.we should be watching how these workers are being treated as it is also a US medical devices company.Expect the same!.

Can we unionize? And will it help?

All, don’t be so quick to sign a separation package. You waive all of your rights. Is it worth 2 months base pay and 2 months cobra? Consider the PIP, you will get one month of both and use this time to look for another job. In my sales area, they are placing solid sellers with a solid performance on a PEP or PIP choice. Why? They may offer a PEP at the end of the PIP, but be cautious, you sign away all of your rights. Believe nothing verbal, if you need something from them for you to sign and leave, get it in writing. And don’t be so quick to work through your manager, wait for HR. Do not trust any Manager or HR for that matter, they are there to protect Benioff.

Check out this case.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/salesforce-worker-allegedly-laid-off-for-taking-care-of-father

I understand everyone is different but there appears to be a lot of getting rid of people for bs reasons.

Any reductions compared to the last time?

A new agreement has been reached between UPS and the Teamsters union regarding driver severance packages. This settlement resolves a conflict over a controversial voluntary buyout program. The deal limits the "Driver Choice Program" to 7,500 drivers nationwide, offering them $150,000 for early retirement. Buyouts will now be awarded based on seniority, prioritizing long-term employees. Union leaders stated the agreement protects workers and contract rights, while UPS affirmed it supports employees during operational changes.

Louisville, Kentucky

https://www.wdrb.com/news/business/ups-teamsters-union-reach-settlement-on-driver-severance-packages/article_5c3d580d-0787-49dc-bdd1-6ea3503ad594.html

Question 1 - Is there the option to defer severance to the next calendar year? Question 2 - Is remaining vacation paid with normal paycheck or with the severance?

Does VZ allow retirement-eligible employees to decline a rebadge so they can be treated as if it were an involuntary separation and retire effectively, preserving all the retirement benefits?

Hopefully someone here has first hand knowledge.

Republic National Distributing Company has issued conditional layoff notices to 641 employees across five Michigan facilities. These notices are linked to a potential sale of the company's operations in control states. The transaction is with Martignetti Companies and is not yet finalized. RNDC stated the notices are precautionary and required by federal law. No final employment decisions have been made at this time.

Kentwood, Michigan

https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/major-alcohol-distributor-warns-641-174054046.html?ref=biztoc.com

All it takes is everyone or the majority saying they will not be participating in it anymore and there is nothing they can do. They can't NSI everyone! Spread the word and make them stop!

Is Wells Fargo still giving severance packages to North Carolina employees? Long-tenured, high-performing North Carolina employees were terminated without severance after what they believed is due to manufactured performance issues being used to avoid severance obligations. Are North Carolina employees especially vulnerable to this compared to other states?

how long does it take to cash out your 401k if you quit this place? I need it. Like let’s say you quit during pay cycle, you wait it out and get your last check the next pay period then what? Maybe take 1-3 weeks?

Anyone based in Ireland laid off recently? What kind of payment did you get?

how to make them sign me up for the layoffs

I have read on reddit somebody mentioned that at his org will be added face recognition for employees for authorization SSO. It sounds weird…. Anybody confirm is this true?

Has anyone in Dell's Sales organization thought about starting a union or organizing with other sales representatives?

A union helped many Amazon employees secure higher compensation and improved benefits. I'm curious if others have considered whether organizing could help address some of the issues sales employees are experiencing at Dell.

For too long, Dell has failed to treat its sales employees fairly. Many of us have gone months without receiving our full commission payouts due to issues with compensation systems. Bonus payments have been mishandled, base pay has been reduced to levels that many find unsustainable, and the list of concerns continues to grow. The company loves to share how well they are doing, but has endlessly demonstrated a lack of care for its sales representatives......

We deserve fair compensation and to be paid out correctly.Tell Dell surveys alone are not enough. It's time to build a union that advocates for employees' rights.

There is strength in numbers. I'm thinking of starting one, and I am curious if there's others that would be willing to support.

If former employees would like to help, they can help us with change petitions and obtaining national press.

Thousands of Google employees have signed a petition demanding improved layoff protections. The Alphabet Workers Union is advocating for severance packages at least matching previous terms and the offer of voluntary buyouts before involuntary layoffs. They also seek the option of extended paid leave instead of lump-sum severance, particularly for visa holders. Additionally, the union opposes a quota-based performance rating system they believe unfairly impacts employees. These demands come amidst a significant increase in tech industry layoffs, with AI restructuring cited as a major driver.

Mountain View, California

https://hrexecutive.com/google-employees-demand-severance-guarantees-as-tech-layoffs-near-157000/

1. Will the severance be paid as a lump sum, or do we have the option to receive it as staggered/salary continuation payments?

2. If paid as a lump sum, what tax withholding rate will be applied?

Thank you for your help.

Is anyone actually required to pay back severance if they get hired at a new company? That’s how the contract reads as to me

How many years do you need to be here to get severance?

when are the drones at Larry's sweatshop going to do the same?

https://qz.com/google-workers-rally-layoff-protections-headquarters-071726

Among the petition's core demands: a severance guarantee for any worker who is laid off, the option of voluntary departures ahead of any mandatory cuts, the elimination of forced-distribution performance ratings, and the ability for employees to take their severance in the form of extended paid leave.

I know of someone who has been out for many months due to mental issues. Isn’t there a limit to how long you can be out or can you be paid indefinitely for this? As a woman, I am fine with maternity leave but this seems subjective.

Wondering when severance is actually paid? Just got my last paycheck before the termination date. Any idea when the documents would be sent and when they would pay out severance?

I’m currently on maternity leave. My husband got a new job and I have the option to no longer work. Being a stay at home mom has been a dream of mine. If I don’t come back at the end of my leave do I need to pay back my leave? Is there a period I need to return to work to avoid that?

Not left vs right. This is up vs down.

1. The “manager” title with no direct reports. Federal labor law excludes supervisors from union eligibility, so titling people into that bucket without giving them real authority shrinks who’s even allowed to organize. In a store that’s two assistant managers and a store manager who can’t organize while the reps under them can. Go up the chain and it never stops. District manager can’t. Senior director can’t. VP can’t. It is not accidental who ends up on which side of that line.

2. Coordinated response when union talk starts. Extra staffing so people can “take time off,” sudden one on ones to “hear concerns,” the moment a store shows organizing interest. That is a known playbook, not something that happens organically.

3. The “one unionized store” comparison. “See, nothing’s different, they just pay dues.” That is not proof unions do not work. It is proof one isolated store has no leverage. Power comes from density, not outliers. Funny how those stores rarely get closed while unionized.

4. Reorgs as the vehicle for cuts, not the goal. The org chart does not change because the new structure is better. It changes because headcount needed to shrink and restructuring is the mechanism. “Right sizing” language usually means the number came first and the chart is just catching up.

5. Benefits eroding slowly enough that no single year feels like the moment. Vacation accrual caps shrinking. Tuition assistance cut in half. Stock and incentive programs trimmed. Healthcare costs climbing. Pensions that used to exist for a subset of employees, gone for new hires. None of it happens all at once, so it never feels like a breaking point. It just feels like death by a thousand cuts. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets written into a contract instead of quietly decided for you year after year.

6. Pay secrecy norms. Talking about your raise percentage, your review score, or your pay band feels taboo, even though discussing wages with coworkers is explicitly protected activity.

7. “Family” language. Reframes an adversarial labor conversation as disloyalty to “the team.”

8. The word “union” itself gets the stigma, not the concept. Strip the label and it is just organizing together for bargaining power. People used to have real leverage in the workplace. Now the default is asking nicely for more while getting handed less.

9. The designated fall guy. Bring in a leader on a short runway whose whole job is the unpopular cuts. Once the hard part is done, a successor comes in and gets to be the relief, thank god it is not like it used to be, while the structural cuts already happened.

10. Manufactured internal strife. Departments blaming each other instead of recognizing everyone is on the same side of this. Division between departments is a lot more useful to leadership than solidarity across them.

11. “Savings” from layoffs are often not real savings. Convert corporate stores to franchise and the labor cost doesn’t disappear, it shifts to an indirect operator while the company still takes its cut. Lay off tenured people and rehire for the same functional need at a lower rate, and headcount looks similar in six months but the average cost per employee dropped because tenure and its pay got reset to zero. That’s not reduced need for labor. That’s wage suppression using a layoff as the delivery mechanism.

One more thing worth saying plainly. Not every union is a good union. Organizing does not automatically mean your interests are protected. Corruption can creep into any institution, including the ones built to fight for you. That does not make the underlying idea wrong. It just means accountability does not stop once something is organized, it just shifts to a different table. Our own FIOS and wireline employees are already organized through CWA. It’s not a foreign concept here.

Now let’s talk about “the company isn’t making money”

Verizon has reported a profit every single year since at least 2001. Not one loss year, through the 2008 financial crisis, through COVID, through every merger. 2020 net income was $17.8 billion. 2021 was $22.1 billion, the highest of the decade. Those were not sacrifice years where the company ate a loss to protect jobs. Those were some of the most profitable years the company has ever had.

2025 net income was $17.6 billion. Dan Schulman’s 2025 total compensation was $34.3 million, on a new contract that includes performance equity worth up to $59.5 million more. The six highest paid named executives combined made about $120 million in 2025, and that’s only the publicly disclosed portion of the leadership team.

Where does the profit actually go? $11.5 billion in dividends paid to shareholders in 2025. A $25 billion stock buyback authorized on top of that. Buybacks don’t hand cash to executives directly, they buy shares on the open market mostly from large institutional holders like index funds and pension funds, while propping up the stock price for everyone who keeps holding. Compare that to the severance cost of the November layoff of 13,000 people: $1.6 to $1.8 billion, a one time charge that’s smaller than what gets paid out in dividends alone in about six or seven weeks.

Yes, some of the money goes back into the network. $17 billion in capital expenditures in 2025. That’s real and legitimate. But that number is also being cut for 2026, down to $16 to $16.5 billion, because the heavy build phase is mostly done. Meanwhile the buyback authorization just grew.

If someone tells you layoffs are happening because the company can’t afford to pay people, that claim does not survive contact with the company’s own numbers.

So what’s the actual moral here

This was never about whether the company can afford to treat people well. It’s about a choice, made over and over, about where the money goes. And the tools used to make that choice feel inevitable, the misclassified titles, the reorg-as-cover, the stigma on the word union, the vague streamlining language, all serve one purpose: making a distributional choice look like a structural necessity. Making “we decided you get less so someone else gets more” sound like “there wasn’t enough to go around.”

US union density peaked around 1954 at roughly 35% of all workers. Today it’s about 9%. Most people in this workforce right now grew up hearing “we don’t need a union, look how well we’re treated,” during a period when that was actually true. That belief never got re-examined as conditions changed underneath it. We’re applying an old conclusion to a reality that no longer matches it.

Is it going to be perfect if we organize? No. But right now we’re fighting each other instead of the actual problem, and giving away power for free in the process. Density is the only thing that turns this from a list of grievances into actual leverage at an actual table. We’re all in the same boat here, just on different floors. What would it take to stop having this conversation store by store, department by department, and start having it together?

A law firm is investigating Amazon for a potential violation of the WARN Act concerning a recent mass layoff. The investigation focuses on whether Amazon provided the required 60 days' notice to 494 employees affected by the layoff. If notice was insufficient, affected employees may be entitled to back pay and benefits. The firm is seeking to speak with impacted individuals to discuss their rights. This action highlights the legal obligations employers have during significant workforce reductions.

Port St. Lucie, Florida

https://straussborrelli.com/2026/07/15/amazon-pbi3-warn-act-investigation/

Why can’t union reps get laid off seems unfair

Have any changes been made to severance? Can anybody who has been laid off share, please? I ask this each time and I know I'm probably being paranoid, but I always worry that they'll use any opportunity to further reduce the package, like they did several times before.

what are the ways to deal with this if it hapened?

Hey I was laid off in the last batch one thing that I was told was we should've tried to unionize. It's the only thing that would protect your jobs. Fight back!

Somebody tell Netflix, I’m ready to tell my story. I want customers, and providers to know how Cigna really feels about them and how this company ACTUALLY treat their employees. This is absurd and the world needs to hear what’s happening.

Did you know that CDW is currently being sued in Cook County, Illinois for wage theft, commission fraud, and unlawful pay structures? Check out Long v. CDW Government LLC, Case No. 2025L007458.

Long alleges that during the hiring and onboarding process “Coworker Success” (what an Orwellian name) and management and leadership presented misleading parameters regarding how commissions were calculated, tracked, and distributed. While we was employed Long asserts that CDW hid the true calculations and unlawfully reduce his commissions by applying unlawful structures without sellers’ knowledge.

If you’re in a sales role at CDW, I highly recommend you research the facts of this case. I’ve heard many similar stories at CDW, but most never make it to a filing because pays terminated employees minimal severance to secure a release of claims and NDA.

Is it true only people above age 50 are surplussed in Dallas after relocating? I heard many people who moved got surplussed after their move. Was there any reason given for surplus or just told your position is eliminated?

With under 6 months here?