Talk about a long time...

Wow, this is been a while since I have blogged anything. Guess I will have more time to blog on...well anything (if I don't get to lazy).

Big news on the home front, I was recently laid off of work last Friday. The layoffs where due to the struggling economy and low sales orders. If they aren't ordering then we can't make parts, if we don't make parts, we have people getting paid to stand around, hence the lay off.

Now there are several factors that went into the layoff. ZF had a number that needed to be laid off and it was 40. The company decided it was going to try and run the entire plant on one shift and not two. I was working on 2nd shift and started looking at the workers on both shifts. On 1st shift I had seniority over only one person in the CNC area, and there were five people on 2nd shift that hard more time on the job than I. There are only so many machines that are on the plant floor and it was getting very difficult on finding where I would fit in.

There was a plant meeting that told the emploees that they were offering severance packages to volunteers to be laid off. Volunteers get 2 weeks of pay for every year of service, plus an addional 4weeks for volunteering (1yr of Cobra insurance at ZF reg rate). If you don't volunteer you get the same as the volunteer except the extra 4 weeks and only 3 months of Cobra insurance. ZF was up front and said that if they don't get the number of volunteers that they would then have to pick people. Also, just because you volunteer didn't mean you got the package/lay off.

Personally, I was kinda scared. I was not 100% on if I'd have a spot to work at or if they would keep me. Majority of 1st shift is workers with 7+yrs of service on average, to my 5 years. My train of thought was that, if I were to volunteer for the lay off then maybe I would have the best outcome possible. If I were really needed they would reject my vol lay off, which I was hoping would happen or I'd have the best severance package availible to me.

Turns out they didn't really need me, and that's fine for now. I also found out that I can draw unemployment on top of my severence package. As much as I am not happy about lossing my job, ZF tried as hard as they could to help the lay off people. The paid for a class outside of work for the lay offs to make resumes and talk about interviews and such. The class also gets your resume and puts it into 200 jobs around the surrounding area. They didn't have to do that.

Writing this has helped me kinda vent what has been going on for the past week. That class is in another hour of me writing in this blog...maybe I'll learn something.