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layoffs

Update: COBRA, RASL

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So yesterday I reported on the flap that arose over the COBRA discount, in which one of GDU’s sterling HR representatives told me that staying on the payroll until December 31 would make me ineligible for the discount on COBRA mandated under ARRAS, the federal stimulus plan. This would mean my health insurance premiums would jump from $26 to over six hundred bucks a month. Even with the discount, the cost will rise to $186, but since I’ll be paying more than that for Medicare, it almost looks affordable.

Not, of course, with almost zero income, but I’ll just have to forego food and other necessities, since at my age I can’t risk going without health insurance.

Well, the story gets better.

I managed to find an e-mail address for an actual human being at the downtown state employee benefits office, taking me outside GDU’s purview. Off went a query:

If my employment with the Great Desert University ends on December 31, will I be eligible for the discounted COBRA?

Here is the reason that I am asking this question:

The federal rule on COBRA premium assistance, posted at www.irs.gov/pup/irs-drop/n-09-27.pdf, says a person is eligible…

(1) who is a qualified beneficiary as the result of an involuntary termination during the period from September 1, 2008, through December 31, 2009, (2) who is eligible for COBRA continuation coverage at any time during that period, and (3) who elects the coverage.

However, at GDU’s “frequently asked questions about COBRA premium assistance” page, this wording appears:

Who is eligible for premium assistance?

A person is eligible for premium assistance if and only if:

He/she is eligible for COBRA coverage between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009

AND

The qualifying event that makes him/her eligible for COBRA coverage is a covered employee’s employment being involuntarily terminated between September 1 2008 and December 31, 2009.

The HR rep with whom I spoke yesterday told me that the first bulleted  point, saying you must be “eligible for COBRA coverage between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009” means that if I am on the payroll on December 31, that will disqualify me from eligibility for the COBRA premium assistance BECAUSE my health care plan will remain in effect on that day, and so, because I will still be covered by my plan on December 31, I will not be “eligible” for COBRA until the next day, January 1, and therefore will miss the deadline. She believes that as long as your plan is in force, by definition you’re not eligible for COBRA—you have to have been thrown off your plan to be eligible. That is, she is saying that as long as your health care plan still covers you, you are not eligible for COBRA and therefore if you are still on the payroll on December 31, you are not eligible for the COBRA discount.

Is that true?

The way I read the federal rule published on the IRS site, it looks like “eligible for COBRA continuation coverage” means only that you are enrolled in an employer’s health plan and that you are involuntarily terminated between 9/1/08 and 12/31/09. Is simply being covered by your health care plan on the day you are involuntarily terminated enough to disqualify you from the discount, if your termination date is December 31?

Thus I need answers to two questions:

1. Is it true that if I am terminated involuntarily on December 31, 2009, I will not be eligible for the COBRA premium assistance? and

2. If it is true that termination on December 31 will make me ineligible for the COBRA discount, will a termination date of December 30 leave me eligible for the premium assistance?

Thank you for any clarification you can offer. I would like confirmation of the answer in writing, since no one at GDU seems to be certain of these policies.

Shortly, along came this startlingly literate response:

Hello,

Anybody terminated involuntarily between 9/30/08 and 12/31/09 are  all included in the Stimulas.

Thank you,

[the correspondent’s name & position]

{Sigh} I don’t know whether to take the word of a person who thinks that “anybody…are” and who can’t spell or punctuate stimulus. But at least now I have something in writing to support my interpretation of the law.

Ah, but it didn’t end there. Yesterday, the story got even better!

To be eligible for the state’s payout for accumulated sick leave (RASL), you have to be officially considered “retired.” Since I’ve worked at GDU since the early Pleistocene, this benefit amounts to about $20,000 for me, to be paid out in three annual installments.

The way I understand it, this means you make an official statement that you are retiring (and you have to do this within two weeks of your termination day) and you start drawing down from the state retirement system or from your 403(b), whichever you’re in.

As usual making an exception of myself, I want to roll over the $130,000 or so that has accumulated in this plan into my large IRA, which is professionally managed. I’d like to do this a) for the sake of simplicity (fewer statements to handle, fewer bureaucrats to deal with) and b) so that all my money is managed by the same financial management firm.

In connection with this strategy, I’ve been told that to be considered a GDU retiree, you have to leave a small amount in your 403(b) fund. Although you can roll over most of the money, there’s some minimum amount you have to leave in the state’s custody. What that minimum is remains a mystery.

So while I was at the HR office receiving incorrect information about the timing of the ARRAS eligibility, I asked the same font of wisdom if she could tell me what is the minimum that has to stay in the 403(b) to maintain one’s status as a “retiree.”

Well, of course she hadn’t the faintest. She’d never heard of such a thing.

She advised me to call the RASL director at the General Accounting Office to ask about this. I’ve been in touch with this woman before, and in the past she’s been very helpful—she was the one who advised me that the story La Maya and I each heard from HR office on two separate GDU campuses, to the effect that if you’re laid off you’re not eligible for RASL, was wrong.

By the time I reached her the following day, I’d about figured out that everything the HR rep had said about COBRA was just so much B.S., and so I’ll admit there probably was an edge in my voice.

When I asked her what was this “minimum amount” I’d been told had to stay in my 403(b) account, she completely went off on me.

She said that if I rolled my money out of my 403(b) into my own IRA, that would “obviously” mean I was not retired and therefore I could not have the $20,000 the state owes me for back sick leave pay.

I asked her to please define what is meant by “retire,” since I didn’t understand how rolling money out of a 403(b) into another tax-deferred plan would cause you to not be retired. She could not or would not respond to that question, but instead informed me flatly that if I rolled anything out of my 403(b), she would send me a letter rejecting my application for RASL. She started yelling at me (!) that “you can’t have everything you want.” I was so nonplussed it didn’t occur to me to say I’m not asking for everything; all I’m asking for is what I’ve earned over the past 15 years of working 14-hour days, 7 days a week with no overtime.

She then demanded that I call Fidelity and TIAA-CREF, where my 403(b) funds reside, with any further questions. She said they had “hundreds” of representatives who have had experience with this issue and could confirm what she said.

It took an hour and a half to get through the punch-a-button mazes to reach humans at those two worthy organizations. TIAA-CREF has disconnected the line that used to reach a person, so that now all of its published telephone numbers take you to a barricade between its employees and the Great Unwashed. Finally I got a call from a guy I reached through an e-mail form on their website.

At Fidelity, the CSR and his manager had never heard of any such rule. They both said they couldn’t imagine how rolling your money from one tax-deferred fund into another tax-deferred fund would magically make you “not retired.” The manager suggested that the way to get around this crazy woman would be simply to make a small drawdown, as though I were going to take out payments to live on, until such time as she approved the RASL and the first payment hit my account. Then, he suggested, just go ahead and do the rollover. Once she’d approved the RASL, there would be nothing she could do.

He also suggested simply rolling over the first distribution into my IRA. He said there’s no rule prohibiting you from making a roll-over, and although Fidelity has to confirm with GDU that the person requesting a distribution actually is “retired,” there’s no way the GAO woman was going to know where the distribution goes.

At TIAA-CREF, the CSR was amazed and said he also had never heard of any such thing. He said, however, that when the request for confirmation of retirement status goes through to GDU, the form used to make that request does say where the distribution is going. So, he concluded, this woman would be able to see whether I was having the money put into my checking account or whether it was being rolled into another tax-deferred instrument. He recommended taking a minimum distribution, paying the taxes on it, and depositing the remainder into my Roth IRA.

This will mean I can’t consolidate my money from three tax-deferred instruments to one for at least three months after I leave GDU. It takes that long after the demented woman at GAO approves your status as a retiree and gives the go-ahead for the RASL payment for the first of the three annual installments to be disbursed. Since I probably am going to have to make drawdowns from savings to survive, this is going to add to the hassle factor immeasurably.

What a flicking nightmare.

Facing unemployment: The emotional effects, the business consequences

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By way of handing off her classes to me, the community college instructor for whom I agreed to play substitute while she’s out of town came over to my house with a pile of lesson plans. Let’s call her La Maîtresse (the teacher), for her extraordinary enthusiasm and her creative approach to the often routine first-semester freshman composition course.

After a long conversation with her, I came away feeling a lot better about the pending loss of my own job. Like me, she also is a state employee: she works in a key agency downtown. Like me, she also is being canned after a long tenure—almost thirty years! And like me, she also was presented with a protracted “winding down” period. Don’t know how much advance notice they gave her (my staff and I had nine months), but her hours have been cut to 50 percent FTE and she soon will be working 0 percent FTE. She’s teaching for the same reason I am: to cobble together a survival income.

Centrally located state employees don’t think much of the Great Desert University’s leadership, of its employees’ financial and procedural competence, or of its president’s motivations. She is not the first to express a certain dubiousness about these issues.

Speaking with someone who’s an old-timer in one of the central nodes of a government agency is always revealing, and our conversation was no exception. For one thing, when I related the story of the identical misinformation La Maya and I got from HR officers on two different campuses about collecting accrued sick leave pay (RASL), she remarked that this sort of thing meant the higher-ups were instructing the CSRs to dispense misleading palaver. As you may recall, we were each led to believe, on separate occasions, that a layoff would mean we could not collect the important RASL benefit unless we retired before the university terminated our contracts. This, as it developed, was untrue.

An eligible state employee (one who has 500 or more hours of accrued vacation pay) has two weeks after termination—any termination, whether layoff, resignation, or even firing—to claim the RASL benefit. You do this by submitting a form stating that you’re “retiring,” even if the real reason for leaving state service is not voluntary retirement. Miss the deadline, and you forfeit the benefit: the money reverts to the state agency. La Maîtresse pointed out that where GDU is concerned, our money would go back to the university. This is not an inconsiderable figure: over $25,000 for La Maya; about $20,000 for me. Because the two-week window is rigid and allows no appeal, if you were misled long enough and convincingly enough, you could easily miss your chance to collect your back sick-leave pay. If enough terminated GDU employees believe they’re ineligible for RASL, the university retrieves quite a large sum from monies set aside to pay this benefit.

That’s a level of paranoia that rises even beyond mine, which orbits just above the stratosphere. But is it paranoia? One wonders: it comes from someone who is very much in the know.

She also said she finds less and less to do on her job, a source of great dissatisfaction. It’s reassuring to hear that someone else is having the same experience and reacting to it in a similar way. At this point my team and I have almost nothing to do. I hate this: it makes me feel lâche—like some kind of slacker. Ever since Her Deanship told our client editors, at the start of July, that our office would close in December, they’ve almost stopped sending us work. On the one hand, that’s just fine with me…I have an allergy to work, anyway. But on the other, I don’t like collecting a salary in exchange for precious little.

I dislike it so much that it’s a significant source of stress. In the tooth-grinding department, I rank it right up there with worry about how to get by without a salary.

It was reassuring to learn that I’m not the only one who a) is anxious to start something new; b) questions the goodwill of GDU’s upper management; c) isn’t doing much on the job. Apparently it’s normal for people who are being laid off to experience resentment, anger, loss of self-worth, outright fear, and finally loss of interest in the work.

Because of these predictable emotions, I would argue that keeping staff members through a long “winding-down” period is counterproductive for the institution. In my case, for example—and evidently in La Maîtresse’s case, too—the longer the parting has strung out, the more disconnected from my job I feel, and the more alienated from my soon-to-be-former employer. Three months ago, if GDU had closed my office and then, on the spot, offered a lower-paid but benefits-eligible job elsewhere in the bureaucracy or offered to farm our work to us on an outsource basis, I might have accepted. Now, I wouldn’t touch it. In fact, even though the university pays PhD’s significantly more for teaching adjunct courses than the community college district does, I’m no longer interested in picking up courses from any of the university’s four campuses. Despite the district’s lower pay, from my perspective the community college pasture looks a lot greener just now.

Surprisingly little research has been done on this subject. The 1994 report linked above was inconclusive, and it conflicted with at least one other contemporary study. Here’s a more recent study that’s pretty interesting, if you can get past being characterized as a “victim.” We’re not victims, any more than a fish is a victim of air because it absorbs oxygen through its gills. We’re unemployed workers who, for one reason or another, are not ready to quit working. The same site published a more lightweight report on the long-term negative effects to employers when lay-offs are used to address short-term challenges. The very issues we’re seeing in my case and La Maîtresse’s—plummeting morale, distrust of the employer, and alienation from the job—are mentioned here among factors that undermine the institution over a very long term.

In our talk, it became clear that both of us are more interested in moving forward with new projects and building a new life than we are in dragging out the last few weeks and months in a job that’s a losing proposition. When I’m at the office, I have to force myself to sit still in front of the keyboard: I simply no longer care about doing any work for that outfit. Yes, I’m grateful for the extra months of pay…but the point I’m making here is that expecting disaffected employees to hang around after you’ve caused their lives to implode is as counterproductive for the institution as it is harmful to the workers.

It will be a long time before GDU recovers from the investment losses it sustained in the collapse of the Bush economy and from the often malicious funding cuts inflicted by a hostile, retrograde, and desperate legislature. But it will be even longer before the university recovers from its leadership’s own ill-advised administrative strategies.

Layoff: The emotional journey

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Over at A Gai Shan Life, Revanche (one of our favorite readers & writers) reports that the predicted layoffs have struck her company and she also is about to join the ranks of the unemployed. We should have quite the campsite, all of us laid-off bloggers dwelling together under the Seventh Avenue Overpass. I propose we call it W-ville. Oh! Sorry. Politics again! 😉

At her site and in a comment to a post below, Revanche describes experiencing a roller-coaster of emotions in response to the anticipation and finally the confirmation of the layoff. Several other bloggers have described wild swings from elation (free at last!) to panic (uh-oh!) to depression (OMG!). Fortunately, she’s managed her money well and has enough to tide her over until 2010, by which time she undoubtedly will have found another job. The panic and depression phases have got to be a lot worse for those of us who haven’t had enough time to shovel out of debt and accrue an emergency fund. But prepared or not, apparently that series of reactions is normal for everyone.

As I remarked some time back, we wouldn’t call it “work” if working were expected to be fun. The vast majority of employees work hard and don’t extract a great deal of personal satisfaction or joy from having to earn a living. But what might be a more or less neutral attitude—i.e., that’s just life—has for many of us turned pretty negative as morale at stressed workplaces heads for the city sewer. Low morale, pinched budgets, and fear make for a toxic environment that anyone in her right mind would be happy to escape. So it makes sense that your first reaction to a pink slip is hallelujah, brother!

The next thought that enters your mind is what on earth am I gonna do? The realization that you’re still going to have to pay your bills and eat, paycheck or no paycheck, is one scary critter. If you’d like to spook yourself a little more, take a look at this interactive feature at Slate.com, an item that will take your breath away. There’s a reason we’re all blogging away at three in the morning: we can’t sleep for worrying. And it’s a good reason.

Then sooner than later, depression sets in. It doesn’t take long to realize that the few employers who have job openings are so swamped with applicants they don’t even bother to respond to your carefully crafted résumé and cover letter. If you’re the kind of person who defines your self-worth according to your job, you feel as though you’re suddenly not worth much. Even if you recognize the important difference between you and what you do, you can’t help but feel that you’ve lost control over your circumstances.

I think there are only three ways to deal with this: plan, plan, and plan.

Plan for your mental health. Lay out some easy-to-follow strategies to keep yourself from going nuts. Most of these are obvious and most are inexpensive: get regular exercise, cultivate friendships, join groups or get more active in the groups you already belong to. Eat well. Stay off the sauce and refrain from using recreational drugs. And especially get yourself out of the house, so you don’t sit around and mope. If you can afford a trip or even just two weeks of informal vacation time at home, give yourself a break during the first days after the layoff.

Plan for the short term. If you have some advance warning—or even if you suspect the ax will fall but don’t know it for sure—build that emergency fund, stock up on food and other necessities. Think through ahead of time how to apply for unemployment, where you will look for work, and what you’ll do until you land a new job. Consider how you might build any current side income streams into bigger or more reliable sources of money. Update your résumé and draft a basic cover letter that you can customize for each job application. And build a list of sites where you can start applying. Don’t forget government agencies, BTW—check out USA Jobs, whose search engine kindly suggests new terms after you’ve entered the keywords that come to mind. If anyone’s hiring, it’ll be the feds.

Plan for the long term. Contact your creditors and try to negotiate short- or long-term ways to ease your loan obligations. Think through whether you can afford to take work at lower pay than the job you just left, and if so, how much lower. Consider whether any alternative kinds of employment would suffice; can you do something altogether different to make a living? Find out whether you can borrow against your 401(k), and if so, how much. Decide how long you can stay in your current circumstances before you have to make a major change, such as renting out a room or subletting your apartment, moving back in with your parents, selling a vehicle, or even defaulting on loan obligations. Think about whether you can relocate, and if so, where. And consider the possibility of going back to school: even though you’ll be racking up student loan debt or borrowing from relatives, at least student loans will keep a roof over your head, you can get health insurance through a college or university, and you’ll be doing something constructive by building new job qualifications.

Some of these are scary prospects. None of us wants to have to think about them. But facing them down and preparing for them does help to rebuild a sense of having some control over your life. I think that feeling of being out of control is the worst contributor to fear and depression. Making some plans, even if they have to be finessed or if they never need to be put into action, goes a long way toward smoothing out the emotional peaks and valleys of the layoff roller-coaster.

Laid-off Employee to Boss: Think again!

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Well, it took a load of chutzpah to turn around and tell Her Deanship that her and her deanly pals’ decision to shut down our office and can all five of us is all wet. As in…i can’t buhlieve i did that!

Apparently she’s so stunned she can’t speak: nary a reply has come back since yesterday’s memo was dropped into the Wells of Silence. Not even the usual two-word “thanks, vh.” One colleague points out that she probably has other things to think about. My paranoia, however, suggests she’s thinking how to say “forget that!” LOL!

Ultimately I recruited a half-dozen full and associate professors—two of them very husky full bulls, indeed—to sign onto our memo. We argued that shutting down the office, which is unique to North America and, as far as we know, to the entire planet, would be penny-wise and pound-foolish, since its creation  entailed a huge investment of talent, administrative diplomacy, cash, time, and effort and it will never be resuscitated if it’s allowed to die now. 

Her Deanship, as we know, was one of the administrators who was responsible for bringing our operation into being, and she has told at least three of our colleagues that she regards it as her baby and regrets having to close it. So there’s an outside chance that her silence comes about while she argues with her co-deans and the rather scary vice presidents that they should accept our proposal, or some variant thereof.

Even if our scheme works, it won’t make a lot of difference for me, financially. The real point here is to save our unit, which has a great deal of potential that should not be wasted. Personally, the main advantage would be that it would allow me to delay collecting Social Security for another 18 months, upping my gross income by a grandiose $304 a month. On a nine-month basis, my salary would drop to about what it was when I was teaching, well below the state’s median income.

Instead of prorating that piddling salary over twelve months, as I used to do, the plan now is to be paid over nine months and then use savings to cover the two summers between December and the time I reach full retirement age. Combining regular monthly savings, the extra amounts that have accrued in my various savings and and checking accounts, and the amount I’ll net teaching three community college classes in the fall, I’ll have about $21,000 above and beyond the $23,000 saved last year to pay off the second mortgage on my house. My house will then be free and clear (again), and my living expenses should drop to around $1,840 a month. Figuring I’ll probably need around $6,000 per summer, there’s enough to cover two summers with one and a half left over!

The scheme’s biggest advantage for me is that it would allow me to delay major drawdowns from my retirement savings for a couple of years, by which time my investments may have had a chance to recover a little. This would be good, obviously. But it’s not imperative: my financial advisor has shown that I can live comfortably enough, even on the present remains of my savings. And obviously, I won’t recover the losses of the past six months in just two years.

Much of the angst brought on by this forced early retirement has been resolved by the discovery of a nifty workaround to get past the $14,100 limit on earned income for those who take “early” Social Security. I’ll tell you about this tomorrow.

10 ways to layoff-proof your life

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Yesterday as Cassie and I were walking to the park, we came across a neighbor in his front yard, putting the finishing touches on a new sprinkling system. He said his father-in-law had installed it, the old man having been laid off and needing work. Then he started to count off all the people he knew who were out of work, including the guy across the street who owns a big house on a half-acre of land fronting on the park. At least, we agreed, the father-in-law had developed a way to keep a little cash flowing into his pocket. The homeowner gave me his phone number, since our house downtown needs a watering system.

You can’t really make yourself layoff-proof these days. Even if the economy doesn’t land you in the can, an injury or illness may put you out of work. A friend who’s a nurse—supposedly a recession-proof trade—was hurt when a second-floor balcony at her rented home gave way under her feet. Memory impairment from the resulting head injury has put her out of commission for the nursing business. So, you’re smart to develop a few strategies, preferably well in advance of the fact, that will blunt the worst of the damage.

1. Establish a budget and keep track of your spending.

Knowing how much you spend and what you spend it onallows you to figure, quickly, what your expenses will be, where you might cut costs, and how much you will need for bare survival.

2. Develop at least one side income stream, and preferably more than one.

Each adult in the household should have a second income stream, no matter how modest. A second job or a skill that creates occasional paying gigs brings in extra cash while you have a job and can at least help if you suddenly find yourself out of work. Responsible teens may also be encouraged to build income streams, to the extent that these don’t interfere with schooling and healthy activities. Examples include blogging, selling crafts, mowing lawns, pet-sitting, babysitting, organizing yard sales, bagging groceries.

3. Keep your résumé up to date.

Goes without saying, doesn’t it?

4. Identify job boards and bookmark HR sites of companies or agencies where you might apply for work.

Do this even if you don’t expect to be laid off. It’s always a wise idea to think about where you might turn if you need a new job or want a better-paying one. Having thought this through in advance gives you a head start if the worst should happen.

5. Join and become active in trade groups.

Maintain a presence in the business community where you work, so that people will know you and you will know them. This, too, will give you a leg up if you have to seek new employment leads.

6. Build an emergency fund.

A second income stream will help with this. You probably should stash enough to live for at least six months. Given the current economic conditions, it might be wise to make this a higher priority than paying down debt.

7. But to the extent that you can, do pay down that debt.

The fewer payments you have to make, the longer you can get by on a reduced income.

8. Don’t rack up any new debt if you can possibly avoid it.

Make it do, use it up, wear it out: this is the time to kick on every frugal habit you know. If you don’t have a budget, start one now, and don’t buy any junk that you don’t absolutely need.

9. Stockpile.

A good freezer can be had for a couple hundred bucks. The one I bought a few weeks ago is the best buy I’ve made in years. It’s already cutting my costs, just by keeping me out of grocery stores. More to the point, though, by the time my job ends in December, I intend to have at least six months of food stored in the house, perishables in the freezer and staples such as rice, beans, and canned goods in the pantry. With any luck, it’ll be quite a while before I go hungry.

10. Plant a garden, even if it’s only in a few pots on the apartment balcony.

Thanks to the veggies that have grown in my yard all winter, it’s been months since I’ve had to buy lettuce. And the produce has been wonderful: fresh from the garden to the table. Freezing and canning these goodies results in a better product than I can buy at the supermarket and extends the garden’s value way beyond the growing season.

Taken together, these steps represent a strategy to prepare yourself for an unexpected job loss. Or for an expected one: they can ease your way into retirement, too.

Stimulus program makes COBRA affordable

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Affording COBRA, the plan that allows workers to extend their health insurance benefits as much as 18 months after a job loss, is a stretch for most of us and impossible for many. After I’m canned, for example, the cost of my EPO will go from $13 a month to $485—and that’s to insure just one person!

We’ve known that the government’s stimulus plan will pick up a chunk of this for a period of nine months, but the university’s HR department refuses to provide the details. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, though, an enterprising soon-to-be-bag lady can dig up the story on her own.

It looks like The Kid and I will fall into the eligible category. You have to meet these guidelines:
-Canned between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009
-Laid off or involuntarily let go (if you walked or you were canned for misconduct, you don’t qualify)
-Subscribed toyour employer’s health-care plan before you lost your job
-Had an adjusted gross income of less than $125,000 if you’re single or $250,000 if you’re married and file jointly (the subsidy phases out at higher rates as you approach $145,000/$290,000)

If you can make the cut, you get a 65% reduction in COBRA for nine months. For me, that means premiums of $169.75 a month, instead of the present $485. Since I’ve already set aside the money to cover the five months between layoff day and my 65th birthday (Medicare day), that would put a lot more in the proposed survival pool: about $1,575!

Don’t know how this will work for The Kid. She would have to insure herself and her child—until her recent divorce, they were on her (now ex-)husband’s insurance. He just lost his job. The cost of insuring more than one person on the university’s plans is pretty high, and she may not be able to afford it on her grandiose $16,000 salary.

If you’re about to be laid off or if you were laid off after last August and turned down COBRA because you couldn’t afford it, look into this. The government is giving people who rejected COBRA a second chance to sign up. They say it will take most employers a couple of months to send out letters to eligible ex-employees. Obviously, though, if you’ve moved and your employer doesn’t have your current address (is there mail delivery under the Seventh Avenue Overpass?), you’ll need to be proactive.