On Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:11:51 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> On 05/08/2012 06:47 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> The laws are very heavily in favor of the employers
> 
> I've noticed that.
> 
> My employer decided to shut two sites. The American one? 3pm local time,
> they say to everybody "pack up your stuff". And that's IT. The place is
> shut. They'll pay some contractor to come round and flog off any company
> assets which still have value, but as far as the staff are concerned,
> they turn up to work on Tuesday, and then suddenly they were unemployed.
> 
> In the UK, you can't do that. We have these pesky employee protection
> laws. Which means you can't just /shut/ the site, you have to pretend to
> think about it for 30 days. And /then/ you can just shut it.
> 
> (Unfortunately, the law doesn't force the employer to /really/ think
> about it. They only have to /pretend/ to reconsider...)

Yep.  When I was laid off from Novell, the layoff affected people around 
the world.  In the UK, employees had less idea what was going on, but 
were given months' advance notice in the end.  Similar situation in 
Germany IIRC.

I offered to take through the end of the week to hand stuff off, and they 
took me up on it.  I know others in the US offices who made the same 
offer and the offer was declined.

And in the US, remember that that not only affects your employment, but 
your health insurance, since it's usually tied to your employer's group 
plan.

Jim

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