More Lay-offs

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

There was another round of lay-offs at my job today.

This marks the fifth time since my hire date that there has been a round of lay-offs that could possibly affect me. There have been many others, for sure, but those were for other sites or departments. But not counting those, there’s been a steady stream of “right-sizing” that’s affected my deparmtent about once every two years.

The first time there were lay-offs, one man from my deparment was let go. That was in early ’07, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t have anywhere else to go work. That’s because, back then, we lived way the hell up in Big Lake and any other place of employment in my area of specialty would have been quite a commute.

The second time was later that same year, and they released another guy from his employment in my department.

The third time was a little over a year later. No one from my department was axed on that day, but my co-worker’s wife (who worked in another department) was laid off, so that was too bad.

The fourth time was the biggie. We were all pretty sure we were getting kicked out. My manager even suggested to us that we look for employment elsewhere. I, and two of the women in my department, made good on his words and managed to transfer to different departments in the nick of time. Four other co-workers weren’t so lucky. The four of them represented over a quarter of our entire department and, with six people transferring (including me) over the next few months, and two people quitting, the department of fifteen was down to three by year’s end. They did hire on a couple of contractors, but they’ve since been let go, too.

So today was number five for me.

I’m still employed.