Coffee heat rising

layoffs

Through the looking-glass in Layoff-Land

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Never let it be said that The Great Desert University is not a weird place to work.

Yesterday one of our client editors dropped by to break a bottle of champagne over the latest issue of her journal to set to sea. While we were confabulating, the subject of the next issue came up, and I remarked that of course I did not know whether our office will still be in business when the spring 2009 issue is in preparation for press.

This caused a moment or two (or three) of stunned silence.

While she was struggling to catch her breath, I explained that the rumor mill first had it that everyone in my job category was to be laid off; then that only certain people in my category would be laid off; then that 50 people on our campus will go; then 100.

She said the university can’t be that broke, because it’s still hiring: her department is doing three searches right now, and Our Beloved Employer finally signed the candidate for the directorship of our sister program. I pointed out that the Learning Factory of Baja Arizona has a hiring freeze on; that I’d applied for a job there only to see the opening go away.

(Good God! She applied for a job there!?!) You could see the alarm as the thought registered.

This is one of those midcareer academics who’s been around long enough to have considerable clout but not long enough to be paid equitably. That means she has access to various ears.

“Well,” said I, “if you know any political strings to pull, now is the time to pull them, because from what I’ve been told the decisions will be made in December.”

“Okay,” said she.

Forthwith, she put the electronic touch on her chair, forwarding a copy to moi.

About three hours later, along comes this message from Her Deanship:

Just a note to say that we value the work of [your office] and the work you all do to support our journals. This is an integral part of [our vast unit’s] operations and value added.

This is classic Deanspeak. Deans do not say anything, not so much as “hello, how are you today,” in a direct manner. To do so would put them and everyone around them at risk. So, they speak in code.

What does it mean? Let’s parse it:

  • We value the work of your office: effectively without meaning. Everyone’s work is generally valued, even that of the scores of faculty associates who have already been canned. It’s an effort to be kind.
  • …support our journals…: meaningful. The degree to which a position supports the university’s mission will determine the likelihood that it will or will not survive the coming purge. Our office supports two parts of that mission: we support research and we provide meaningful real-world vocational training. Big, though not huge.
  • …an integral part of [our vast unit’s] operations…: this could border on huge. “Integral part” means “our vast unit would be significantly harmed by the loss of this program.” Good.
  • value added: interesting new buzzword! I haven’t heard that one in the present context. We’ll be tracking down its source and using it in our next report.

Mmm hm. I believe the gist of this message is “I don’t think you’re going to be laid off.”

LOL! We’ll find out soon enough. The Board of Regents meets in the first week of December; after that, more layoff announcements are expected.

A New Plan: Retirement

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Over the past few days, I’ve about made up my mind that if I get laid off after the Board of Regents meets in December, I will not try to get another full-time job at all. Nor will I take regular draw-downs from my much-stressed retirement savings.

No.

Yes. I think I can live on a combination of Social Security and freelance editing, if I can earn a minimum of $1,000 a month. This would allow me to do the following things:

1. Quit. Yes!!!! Quit, quit, quit!
2. Leave the planned 4 percent retirement drawdown invested until the market turns around.
3. When I reach 66, return the money I’ve drawn from Social Security to the government and reset my payments to the “full retirement” level, substantially increasing my monthly income and collecting a chunk of tax refunds for the Social Security grab I paid at ages 63, 64, and 65.

Life would be very pinched for the next 2 1/2 years, until I reach 66. However, at 66, the increased Social Security payments would put me back in the middle class, and, with any luck at all, my savings will have recovered enough that I can safely draw down 4 percent. These two factors would make the rest of my life tolerable. When M’hijito and I sell or rent the Renovation House, I would then have enough income that I wouldn’t have to do any paid work at all to maintain a reasonable lifestyle.

Here’s how I see this:

Health Insurance: I will be eligible for Medicare in 18 months. COBRA lasts 18 months. The cost is $475 a month, but most of that will be covered by the amount GDU will owe me for accrued vacation pay. Thus that amount will not have to come out of month-to-month cash flow.

Renovation Loan: I will pay that off, using the money I have earned and squirreled away for the purpose. This will save the $170 payment and the $204 a month I pay toward principal, cutting my monthly expenses by $374. The amount of the loan, it is to be hoped, will be returned in a few years, after M’hijito and I sell the Investment House, on which I spent the funds.

Emergency and unexpected expenses: The amount I can generate from freelancing and Social Security will cover only routine costs. It will not cover a plumber’s bill, a car repair, a veterinary visit. However, I have about $18,000 saved up to buy my next car; this amount doubles as an emergency fund. I can use some of that to cover surprise expenses, or make an occasional drawdown from the big IRA.

Routine savings: The $200 a month I normally set aside to buy such things as clothes and other little indulgences will go away. The only way I can survive on freelance income plus Social Security is to dispense with regular savings. I am, however, allowed to earn as much as $1,125 a month without having Social Security taken away from me (isn’t THAT generous?). My plan assumes a regular freelance income of $1,000. Any amount more than that can go into a savings account. I hope.

Budgeting: In addition to foregoing the routine $200/month savings deposit, I will have to cut $300 a month off my living expenses budget. That means, basically, that $300 will have to come out of the grocery budget. Since there’s a little play in that budget anyway, this probably can be done simply by changing the way I eat and by purchasing nonfood goods second-hand at thrift shops and yard sales, rather than buying everything new.

If I do these things and they work (second part of that is the big IF), I will be OK in the winter months when utility bills are low. During the summer, when temperatures exceed 110 degrees day after day, staying out of the red will be difficult, but I think it can be done. I will start with a cushion of about $900, back-up money that’s already sitting in the credit union. That will rise to around $1085 by the end of June, as budget underruns stack up. As utility bills bloat, my cushion will drop to a low of about $815 in October. In November, though, it will begin to grow.

Should I sell my house and move to Sun City, where real estate and living expenses allegedly are cheaper?

Hell, no! First, after the foreclosure across the street, my paid-off house is now worth less than I paid for it BEFORE the bubble. My house is very pleasant, it’s centrally located, and it’s paid off. I did a little math and discovered that it costs me about $93 a month more to live here than it would to live in Sun City, assuming I do not engage in full Scrooge McDuck lifestyle. I believe that after commissions and closing costs, I could net—if I’m lucky—about $258,000 on the sale of my present house. In Sun City, I could buy a house for around $200,000.

Such a place would need about $10,000 worth of upgrades and renovation to bring it more or less up to date and make it into something I’d want to live in. Consider: My house is pretty nice, with a big lot, a beautiful pool, wonderful bearing citrus trees, a private front courtyard, skylights in three rooms (real skylights, not aluminum tubes), a new roof, expensive tiling throughout, an updated kitchen, and a spiffy gas stove. For $200,000, what you get in Sun City is a 30- to 40-year-old tract house whose quality and style come under the heading of “better than living in a trailer…just.” Cabinetry and trim are veneered in plastic; there’s no gas service, so you have to use an electric stove; landscaping is gray, green, or (worse!) white pebbles; and the general atmosphere is Early Mausoleum. Spare me, God!

Well, my friends, I think She will. Spare me Sun City, that is. I really do believe I can hop off the treadmill, delay drawing down savings until the market turns around, and live on Social Security and freelance earnings for the next three years.

Now. All we need is for President Raven to croak “Nevermore” come the first part of December: declare a state of financial emergency at GDU and lay me off. Ohhh please, Mr. Raven: d-o-o-o-o-n’t throw me in the briar patch!
😉

Another day, another dollar

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Are we all canned tomatoes?

Once again we were told a big announcement of layoffs would come down today. And once again, no such horrible fiat occurred.

I am beyond getting myself worked up over this stuff. Who knows how much truth lurks in these rumors, and really: who cares? There’s not a thing anyone can do about it. If GDU decides to can you, you’re canned. So deal with it!

The current flap arose when a local television news program interviewed the chair of a department on the East campus. The reporter spelled the interviewee’s name wrong; described faculty associates (low-paid semester-to-semester temporary workers) as “professors”; and claimed that today the university would announce that most or all such wretches’ jobs would end with the start of spring semester.

Well, in addition to our intrepid investigator’sobvious little lapses in fact-checking and her glaring ignorance of how a university works, there’s no reason to believe that the guy she interviewed should know any more about pending layoffs than any other chair of any other department. And to my and my spies’ considerable knowledge, departmental chairs presently are sitting in the pitch dark.

A fair amount of stürm und drang arose over this, with much uneasy watching of e-mail in-boxes and the university’s homepage. Once again, the nothing that happened amounted to an anticlimax.

About all anyone can do in these conditions, IMHO, is get one’s financial ducks in a row and then forget it. Figure out what emergency fund or other resources you have to fall back on, pay off as much debt as you can, get check-cashing protection on your bank account, learn what your employer will pay you at severance, and find out how to apply for unemployment. Maybe apply for a few jobs and activate your professional network. Then put it out of your mind and go on about your business.
And be thankful for every day you still have a job.
🙂

Layoff fears surface again

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Harvesting Dollars reports that he survived the latest round of layoffs at his workplace. He describes the basic unfairness of the process as people were kept or canned based only on what job they were lucky or unlucky enough to occupy, rather than on the quality of their performance.

The rumored layoffs at GDU that had me so exercised haven’t occurred yet. But get an eyeball full of this!

If that’s not a university president saying “we’ll soon be canning everyone in sight,” I’d like to know what it is.

Well, so far the employer I covet hasn’t called me back for a second interview. However, if I understood them correctly, it still may be a bit early. The two people who spoke with me said they would do a second round of interviews late this month (it’s now only the 21st) and they hoped to make a decision in the first week of November. So I’m still hoping. If they come in with an offer that even approaches what I’m earning at GDU, I’ll probably jump ship…since it’s clear GDU’s boat is sinking fast.

Sigh. This is so disturbing. Even if I get another job (not bloody likely!), I like the job I have and don’t want to uproot myself this close to retirement. Damn those SOBs in Washington!

A vote for Obama is a vote against stupidity.

Layoffs? Market crash? Great Depression II?

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It’s after 4:00 p.m. and no news has leaked from this morning’s meeting that was supposed to announce the occupational demise of all us year-to-year academic professionals. Sorta looks like my spies were right and my friend’s were wrong.

Meanwhile, a different chunk of the sky has stopped falling on our heads. Hevvin help us, the Dow Jones closed up 936.42 points—that’s 11 percent—and all of us have avoided having to put down our deposits on a campsite in Bushville (the latter-day Hooverville).

The outcome of either of these two ongoing dramas remains to be seen. Given the market’s vertiginous volatility, we all know it could drop 11 percent (or more…much more) tomorrow or the next day after tomorrow or next week. And given the mysterious ways in which the Great Desert University works, we peons all could be laid off any day in the same time frame.

So what does it all mean for you & me? Well, I dunno about you. But I’m not holding my breath until my savings return to their former level. Sure, I’ll be glad if they regain their value (since I’ll be needing them in a year or two…or a week or two). But I don’t expect anything.

One thing about pessimists: our surprises are always pleasant.

As for employment: your employer may be slightly less wacko than GDU, but my employer has wacked its last wack where I’m concerned. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that I’m rowing a leaky canoe. I intend to keep my job applications out there and add a few more to the mix. The first really good offer that comes across my desk will take me off the bailing team and put my feet on dry land.

The single targeted hire who was courted to take over our sister program has never bothered to respond to the (very generous!) offer sent to her a few weeks ago. One can only assume she’s waiting for another offer that she must consider more desirable, placing ours in the second fiddle’s chair. If this woman doesn’t accept, that program is as good as gone. And when it goes, our office will be at huge risk: nay, let’s admit we probably will go, too. The soonest we could be closed down is the end of December, when the other program may shut down if no accommodation with the interim director (who hates living in Arizona) can be made. The latest will be the end of next summer, when all our research assistants will graduate (oh so conveniently!) at once. If no Scholarly Publishing Program remains to staff our office, I will have to hire from the English department and then teach the new RAs the equivalent of a semester course in basic editing and another semester course in advanced editing (oh yes, all at once) with no increase in pay.

And guess what I’m ain’t a-gunna do?

So. If a bullet was whistling through the air and I somehow dodged it, I’m left to calculate how to deal with the sand dune collapsing under my feet. At least falling sand gives one a little more time to engineer an escape.

Blowin’ in the wind…

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Well, it’s time to nail some suspenders onto the old oaken barrel, since that’s what we’ll be wearing now that our shirts are lost.

Called the redoubtable financial advisors this afternoon. It must be said that they sound pretty nonplussed over there. On the other hand, even though they allow that conditions are unprecedented, historic, and weird, they continue to insist that cashing out whatever pittance you have left in the market is a bad idea. One of the senior partners remarked that if the market continues to drop at today’s rate, it will only take about 14 days for it to arrive at zero.

“Is that a logical possibility?” he asked rhetorically.

“No,” he answered himself. If that happened all the stock in the land would be worthless. You could pick up an IBM certificate off the street, for free. This, he believes, does not compute. He and his colleagues are convinced the fall will stop sooner or later and the market will bounce back up.

We shall see.

The answer to another question is also blowing in on the wind: the University Academic Committee is having a little emergency meeting come Monday morning to discuss how to cope with a 20% budget cut. I’m told this is the first step toward the rumored layoffs.

We shall see about that, too. Personally, I no longer care what they decide. I’ve done all I can to protect myself should any such layoffs actually occur: applied for a half-dozen jobs that look like good fits, laid out a plan to pay off the Renovation Loan, and developed a strategy with the financial advisors to weather a period of unemployment.

Interestingly, though, I’ve spoken with a couple of auld acquaintances who, I discovered, happen to be on that committee. They tell me no announcement regarding layoffs of any specific job class was made, nor do they believe my particular set is likely to see blanket layoffs.

There’s not a thing I can do about whatever action the Great Desert University takes. And I am not going to get myself exercised over something I can do nothing about.
Thaes ofereode,thisses swa maeg.