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Comment by newswasboring | Hacker News Reader

> Boeing said it hopes to reach its job cut targets through voluntary means, including buyouts and early retirement offers. Employees who take the buyout will receive three months of health care and one week of pay for every year they have worked at Boeing, up to 26 years, the company told workers last week.

I don't have any reference here because I have worked only in europe or asia, but is this a good offer? I don't think its a very good offer. Why will someone take this?

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"Always take the package" is a mantra you'll hear from some folks who have been through earlier market carnage. The idea is that you're liable to be laid off in the next round of cuts, or the next; and subsequent packages are never as good as the first one, if they exist at all. But if you're sure things will turn around in the economy in general, and for the company you work for in particular, then don't take the package.

At least in my little bubble at Boeing, a large fraction of us are union employees, and our union contract stipulates that involuntary layoffs also provide the same severance benefit (1 week per year of service, capped at 26 weeks). The medical coverage may be different, I'd have to refer back to our contract to see.

Wow; not too many HNers are in a union, I'd guess. Next thing you'll be telling us is that you have a pension.

Of course, if the company goes bankrupt, all bets are off. Or even if things get so dire that the company manages to claw back some benefits in the next negotiation. Seems unlikely though.

I do have a very small pension benefit. They eliminated the pension for new employees in 2013, and the existing pensions were frozen sometime around 2016 or 2017.

Boeing is one of the very few companies with an engineers union in part I think because of their practice on other times because of the hiring/layoff patterns that included engineering layoffs en masse - even in non pandemic years.

This is Boeing we're talking about here... They won't be allowed to go bankrupt - they're a national symbol of the USA, and will get a bottemless-bailout well before bankrupcy.

You might be surprised how many above a certain age have at least small (defined benefit) pensions. People who work/have worked for government as well as a variety of $BIG_CORP. But pensions used to be pretty common among the larger tech companies of the day. I have one from a 1980s/1990s employer.(It was discontinued when they were acquired and I left shortly thereafter.)

When do pensions reside when a company disappears?

The US federal government's Pension Benefit Guarantee Corportation is supposed to prop up the pensions of failed firms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Cor...

In addition to sibling comment, in my case, the pension is still administered by the acquirer of the acquirer (in this case Dell).

Here in Norway, the most common form (90%) of pensions from private companies[1] is required to be handled by a bank, insurance company or similar institution[2].

I've got this. So each month my company pays a percentage of my salary to my pension account with the bank our company has a deal with. The percentage is part of my employee contract.

This ensures my pension is still around if the company goes belly up, and my pension is protected as banks are required by law to buy insurance covering savings in case of bankruptcy.

[1]: https://www.nho.no/tema/pensjon-og-forsikring/artikler/tjene...

[2]: https://lovdata.no/lov/2000-11-24-81/§2-2

After my previous employer went through a merger I let it be known to upper management that I was friendly with that I wanted to be laid off. They arranged it, then quit and hired me at their next place a year later. Got a severance package and a signing bonus and a 40% raise from the same manager within two years.

I guess it depends on the company. My wife's company's standard buyout is 2 weeks per year worked (she works in travel). 1 week of severance per year worked is not great. In the current economic environment I would think people would be very hesitant to take it. Lets say I have been there 10 years, means I only get 10 weeks severance. I still need to find a new job and there are tens of thousands of other laid off engineers competing for jobs and those jobs are very limited. Odds of finding a new one before severance runs out is low.

If you don't take it you run the very real risk of getting cut with nothing.

Unfortunate situation all around.

It would be very unfair for Boeing to offer 1 week per year served if you leave voluntarily, and then revoke that payment if they forcibly lay you off.

At $OLD_TECH_CORPORATION_MAKING_DATABASES, we received one week per year served after being forced out, plus an additional "free month" of pay as well.

sure, but the reality is that in the beginning of layoffs they will have larger reserves available for severance. As economic hardships mount those reserves will dwindle. Companies pretty much stopped caring about fair a long time ago unless you are lucky enough to have reached the C-Suite. Some companies alter the severance package based on nothing but how much your VP level officer likes you.

I completely agree, that is totally a nasty risk vector!

Fortunately I am a Boeing shareholder at $139.xx per share, so any measure to cut costs and reduce bureaucracy is welcome in my book. What a world!

Companies do not care about "fair" unless it provides them an economic benefit or is contractually required.

By American standards, it's not awful. There are very few legally mandated protections for employees.

2 weeks per year of service is also a typical value.

Healthcare is often not included, which is a real shit sandwich for the ex-employee. Their options are COBRA (basically, pick up the full tab for coverage on their own dime - employer usually pays >50% of the cost of a policy). Or, buy a plan on the ACA marketplace. Or, do without.

either 1 or 2 weeks per year of service is pretty normal for a buyout - 2 weeks is more seen in forced layoff, but I suspect this package is targeted at people near retirement, hence the lower value.

Agreed on both points.

My main point was that none of this is legally mandated at the federal level (though there may be state laws or union contracts at play depending on who is being let go).

I've also seen severance plans that are variations on...

(2 weeks pay) + (1 weeks pay * years service)

I didn't think "do without" was a legal option anymore.

Enforcement of the health care mandate was shut down by trump. Without a mandate, the ACA doesn’t work

It’s debatable that it worked even with the mandate. Plenty of young, healthy people decided paying the penalty was a better option than paying some amount of money greater than the penalty for bad coverage.

It would work if the option was for people to purchase health insurance on healthcare.gov or pay the equivalent amount in extra taxes. Then people wouldn't have any reason not to purchase it. But also, everyone would have to be directed to healthcare.gov without exception to create the appropriate mix of healthy and sick lives for a viable marketplace, which means banning employer involvement in health insurance.

Your first part doesn’t follow the second

You could keep employee insurance. If everyone else has to sign up, you still get a diverse risk pool. Maybe not perfect but way better than what we have now.

Sure the 700 or whatever penalty wasn’t the end state. Make it a $5000 penalty vs $2500 to buy coverage.

It's an option, you are just penalized on your taxes. Curious to see whether that changes though.

It's a respectable offer for a company outside the tech space, especially considering that many other companies simply laid off workers without providing severance or post-termination health care. It's not a great offer, but considering their change in fortunes over the past 1.5 years, its better than most people would have expected them to offer.

Generally, in the US buyouts are always better than layoff severance.

If someone is completely burnt out from their job or close to retirement already, they will take it. One week of pay per year is stingy, though, but they start with voluntary and move from there.

It's not terrible. Plenty of people will happily take this, because they think they can get a new job quickly and pocket the buyout.

Intel, Cisco etc I know had similar severance packages. They rehire experienced ppl after things settle down. Lot of the 40/50+ crowd will have multiple entries on their resume of leaving and rejoining later. I worked with one greybeard who had left and rejoined the same division 4 times.

It sounds like it's geared towards incentivizing those that are close to retirement (and therefore probably higher paid) to retire sooner.

It's about average for salaried office workers in the US, but probably pretty good for their South Carolina laborers (where only about 2% of Boeing employees are unionized).

Boeing has factories in multiple states and in the US labor law and employment contracts vary based on state laws and labor union presence.

It’s a pretty bad offer. Works only for people who are very close to retirement anyway.

Which is one way to ensure not too many people sign up. Losing people that you expect to lose in a couple years saves some money and presumably everybody was planning on them retiring soon anyway and so had plans in place so knowledge isn't lost.

It might also get a few people who have personal reasons to leave, but headcount is lost with people who wouldn't stay so there is no loss.

Boeing has done this voluntary offer several times. The goal is specifically to entice people who have 25+ years of service and are at or close to eligibility for collecting their pension.

When I worked there I had coworkers who were ready to retire but were hoping for one of these rounds so that they could get a little extra on the way out.

If they were thinking about retiring already; at 20 years, that's an extra half a year of salary than yesterday. This offer is in addition to retirement plans they already have (401k and pension)

The best I've even seen was 1 month per year. Some industries are cyclical and often hire the same people back after a little while.

In the US, it's about as good as it gets, not counting keeping your job.

It feels more like an indemnity than a severance.

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