On 21-5-2009 12:41, Invisible wrote:
> andrel wrote:
> 
>> If the unemployment benefit is based on your last income it is also a 
>> 10% cut on that.
> 
> As far as I know, in the UK unemployment benefit is unrelated to your 
> prior income and is computed based only on how much money they think you 
> "need" in order to survive. (E.g., stuff like whether you have children.)

Here it is a percentage of your last income. Makes sense in a way, 
because if you earn more you have a bigger house, a bigger car and you 
are probably the only income. So you need more to get you through the 
hard times. Not totally fair perhaps but it prevents a lot of secondary 
damage.

I am not following what is going on in the private sector, but I think 
the concept here is that people are partly fired for some time and get 
unemployment benefit for that part. That way it doesn't affect your 
unemployment benefit later.

>> So in general this kind of 'offer' is only acceptable if
>> - your official salary stays the same but you get a percentage of it
>> - it is temporary
>> - the mother company guarantees that the UK branch will not be closed 
>> as long as this measure is in place
>> - the guy who offers it also accepts a cut in salary. Preferably more 
>> that that 10% to show his confidence in the outcome.
> 
> Somebody asked if Fathead is taking a pay cut as well. We are told he 
> is. (Obviously, there is no way to actually verify this.)

Ask him to proof it ;)

>> Did you check if such a thing is even legal in the UK? What do the 
>> unions say about this?
> 
> It's legal if we all sign a written document agreeing to it. It is 
> required to be unanimous though.

Does that mean it is only legal if it is unanimous or that they want 
full pressure from do-workers on everybody?

> Unions? We don't have any.

Interesting. A relic from the Thatcher days?

>> I think you have also to take into account how likely it is that it 
>> will get better. Is the management competent and how well do they know 
>> the market are some of the most important questions.
>>
>> I know not in details how the actual situation is, but based on what I 
>> heard I would not agree.
> 
> Uh, yeah.
> 
> We got fed the whole sob story of how lots of other companies are doing 
> this sort of thing and it isn't unusual, and our industry has been hit 
> hard, yadda yadda yack.
> 
> It's true that our customers' entire business model is based on 
> continuous R&D. If you imagine a company such as Intel deciding to stop 
> developing new products, you'll instantly see how utterly suicidal that 
> would be. So they'll have to start taking projects off hold soon if 
> they're not going to go under. But they don't have to give the contacts 
> to *us*; there _are_ other people in our line of work.
> 
> The fact of the matter is, last year two key people left the company - 
> our Director of Business Development, and shortly afterwards our General 
> Manager. Since that time, our order book has become progressively more 
> empty. 

Are you sure you have the events in chronological and causative order?

> Then we got rid of our lab manager (we're not sure why, it just 
> randomly happened one afternoon).
> 
> Right now, it's pretty bad. I've never known the lab to be so quiet. 
> Every time I walk into the office, I see a dozen people sitting around 
> surfing ebay. When you've got three project managers sitting there 
> *watching* people playing Flash games, you know something isn't right.
> 
> So far, I'm not seeing any kind of plan to get work to materialise. I 
> guess it's just an unglamourious "our sales guys are going to keep doing 
> what they're doing until some work starts appearing". Last time our lab 
> was this empty, our lab manager was jumping up and down on the phone 
> daily demanding to know when more work was coming. But he doesn't work 
> for us any more...

So the short version is that everybody that was actually able to find 
new work is no longer working there? Enquiring mind wants to know.

> Basically, they want us all to take a pay cut, they can't tell us how 
> long for, they can't tell as a specific condition for removing the cut, 
> and we need to decide, unanimously, in the next few hours. Great.

That pressure alone would make it illegal in my opinion, but IANAL.

> PS. I'd almost consider resigning myself just so my collegues can keep 
> their jobs... but my pittiful salary is unlikely to make much difference.

Here that would mean voluntary unemployment and a complete loss of benefit.

Whatever you decide: go looking for another job.

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