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>DuPont said it expects 10 percent of its 63,000-strong global workforce will be “impacted,” and the company is budgeting for $650 million in “employee separati
by TheBiv 11y ago
>DuPont said it expects 10 percent of its 63,000-strong global workforce will be “impacted,” and the company is budgeting for $650 million in “employee separation costs.” Analysts also expect layoffs at Dow, which employs 53,000 worldwide.
>Dow chief executive Andrew Liveris also called it a “seminal event for our employees.”
Seminal indeed.
- saosebastiao 11y ago$650M / 6300 ~= 100k per employee. Granted, not all of that will be allocated to severance packages, but even half of that would be a pretty phenomenal.
- Bud 11y ago...most of which will probably go to a handful of executives.
- TheBiv 11y ago"About half of employers offering two weeks' salary for each year you've worked there." http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/18/news/economy/annie/fortune_annie101805/ http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/18/news/economy/annie/fortune_a...
- pc86 11y agoThe article is over a decade old, I suspect it's less than half now.
- cschmidt 11y agoEven $100k doesn't do much for you if you live in Midland, MI and just left the only chemical company in town. You'll have to move, probably out of state, and be competing with thousands of other newly unemployed folks chasing a few jobs in a mature industry. (Disclaimer: I grew up in Midland, and my family all worked for Dow.)
- ethbro 11y agoI appreciate the difficulty of having to find a new job with a bunch of other folks, but at the higher-end salary range is "finding a new job in town" still a reasonable expectation?
- cschmidt 11y agoI suppose it depends on where you live, and what you do. I live in Boston doing software, so I can always find another job without moving. It will affect Midland more. Midland is an old company town, and there isn't a huge amount of chemical industry in the state, other than the Dow support system of suppliers. The other employer in town, Dow Corning, was a joint venture but (as was also announced today) is also being absorbed back into Dow. The house prices in Midland will collapse, as lots of people move out of town together. There just aren't going to be enough open jobs in the chemical industry. I think most people will either have to retrain or retire early. I know that's how the world works these days, but it is sad to see my hometown come to such hard times.
- HarryHirsch 11y agoWith all the shift to contract labs abroad, is finding a new job in chemistry still a thing? The trend for medchem startups these days is to be "fabless", it's a dude with an idea who contracts synthesis and testing out to labs in China.
- ethbro 11y agoThat seems like a terrible idea from what I've heard about factory IP concerns in China. Or are labs more trustworthy?
- steve-howard 11y agoIf we ignore the long term, we can trust anyone!
- HarryHirsch 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- adenadel 11y agoThey aren't laying off the entire workforce, only 10%. The 6300 and 100K per employee figures are accurate.
- lostlogin 11y agoWe will see. My bet is that there will be a few spectacularly golden handshakes and the bulk will suffer. I'm rarely disappointed by being skeptical.
- dave5104 11y agoBut 10% of 63,000 is 6,300, which are the ones affected and probably on the receiving end of severance pay.
- usefulcat 11y ago10% of 63000 is... 6300
- eitally 11y ago$100k isn't what each employee will get. A lot of that will go to COBRA coverage and outsourced job placement services.
- leroy_masochist 11y agoGiven this press release was issued after the announcement of plans to merge, my guess is that it's pro forma for NewCo. In other words, I think the denominator here is 10% * (63,000 current DuPont employees + 53,000 current Dow employees) = 11,600 people. If that is in fact the case, then average severance would be a bit over $50k. EDIT: Dow's current workforce 53k, not 58k.
- baldeagle 11y agoAye, it does work out to about $100k per employee, but you have to remember that not all employees are equal in pay or severance. Applying a generous 70/30 rule (80/20 would be harsher), that is a lot of life changing for $30k for the bulk of the people.
- tw04 11y agoYou're assuming half of it isn't going to VP+ level folks. Which is probably a bad assumption.
- CPLX 11y ago> Seminal indeed. At the risk of being gauche, one might consider "seminal event" a reasonable euphemism for "getting fucked"
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- roymurdock 11y ago> Getting laid off is almost like winning the lottery Now there's an opinion you don't hear every day. Why not just leave the company if you know you can be quickly hired into a better-paid/more enjoyable job?
- herge 11y agoSeverance pay given when you are layedoff.
- marme 11y agowhen you get laid off like this it is normal to get between 2 to 3 months salary as severance. if you quit you get nothing, i have seen people stick around in companies after mergers for weeks knowing they are going to be laid off but just waiting around for their severance check because waiting 2 weeks to leave a job can be a difference of ten of thousands of dollars in your pocket
- pc86 11y ago> when you get laid off like this it is normal to get between 2 to 3 months salary as severance. [citation needed]
- pageld 11y agoWhen I was laid off in 2009, I got 2 weeks 'severance' even though I had 10 PTO days accrued. (They basically just paid out my paid leave). This was for a software consultancy business. I would like to live in your 'normal'.