nice work if you can get it

[ghostjmf]

So the speaker to the old-folks meeting says:

"And after you take this entirely voluntary retirement package, if you take it that is, entirely voluntarily, that is, you can't come back to work for RichU in any form for 12 months."

And we old-folks (the 55-years-&-over non-professors to whom this package is being, entirely voluntarily, offered) said "what huh?".

"Do you mean we can come back to work a year later? What about the severence pay, & all those retirement benefits, meaning the calculated-at-today's recession-reduced-rate pension, & including that $750.00 per month supplement we collect until we're 62?"

"If you did come back, you get to keep getting that", said the speaker.

Gee, sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Before, it sounded like a very bad deal, since the money they would give me is barely more than my rent, & that $750.00/month supplement part of it cuts out at age 62. Leaving me with not enough for rent, let alone food, at 62. As opposed to what they've previously said they would give me at 62, which is just about enough to meet what my rent could be then. And as opposed to what they've previously said they would give me at 65, which is about 1/3 more.

At age 62 social security would give me some money too, but by no means enough.

Which is why I will try to hang on by my fingernails until I really am 65.

Now, I am not one of those people they would be hiring back 12 months later. But some people in the room are, & I could see the wheels spinning.

Collecting a retirement pension, albeit a reduced one, & a full year's severence pay to tide you over during the 12-month's when you aren't allowed back, followed by a salary (or consultant fees, which is more likely the case) thereafter would not be so bad a deal.

I can't exactly see how people following this route would be saving RichU money. Well, because they're accepting a reduced pension, to a certain extent they would be. Eventually, but not in the short run, which is what the "entirely voluntary" plan is being whipped up for.

(None of this info about the "supplement to get you to 62" is secret.)

[SportsFan68]

Holy cow! What a deal! I'd take that one so fast my head would spin.

Zoom! There I go out the door!

[tlynn78]

That does sound like a deal, if, as ghost says, you're in a position to take it.

I'm very grateful to be a state employee at this point in time.


t.

[ghostjmf]

And I'm very grateful to be a union employee; most of those who stand to get hired back because of their high value to the institution, at least as consultants, 12 months later, are not. The union has a very good deal for layed-off people; I think its full salary for 8 months, plus if the position opens up again, you are supposed to be 1st in line for it. And in the interim you are supposed to be considered 1st for comparable positions. Of course, institutions like this one have a way of changing the job description considerably when a position reopens, so that the layed-off person doesn't qualify for it any more, even when the actual duties remain unchanged.

But the point of the "voluntary early retirement", as opposed to to layoffs, is to get people to leave who were considering it anyway. When they've done buy-outs before, which they certainly have, its been selective, & only offered to people in very high-level positions. Of course I don't know the exact terms of those buy-outs (I do know the exact dollar amount with what they offered me, & I couldn't live on it in the not-that-extravagant style to which I am accustomed in most parts of the United States, not without a concurrent new job), but those people's underlings have talked about the year's severence pay, which they must have been told about by the leaving boss; at least that part's the same.

I have pretty much been resigned to the fact that when I do retire from here, I'm going to have to have another job, anyway. Wherever I live at the time. But I don't want to do it right now with the pickings suddenly turned so slim, after putting in 23-1/2 years.


The only people who stand to gain from this package are people very close to the age they were going to retire at anyway, & people who make such astronomical sums that even the reduced pension isn't reduced enough to cause them any worry. And people who were seriously considering a geographical move or career change anyway; this way, they can move, or start their new career & use the pension for living expenses while they get settled in a new job/a new locale.