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.)

> 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.)

> 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.

Unions? We don't have any.

> 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. 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...

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.

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.

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