"Dear Employee, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Check your mail again at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 2."

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Drugmaker Lays Off 1,700 Via Conference Call Ahead Of Holidays

First Posted: 12-17-10 04:51 PM | Updated: 12-17-10 07:20 PM

Laura Bassett
[e-mail]



On Nov. 30, employees at Sanofi-Aventis pharmaceuticals, the world's fourth-biggest drugmaker, received an email from the company wishing them a happy Thanksgiving and telling them to check their email again at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 2.

A.R., a Sanofi-Aventis sales representative in California who wished to remain anonymous, as her contract forbids publicly disparaging the company, said she and her coworkers each received one of the two mass emails the company sent out that Tuesday morning. Both emails contained a code, an 800-number and a call time, either 8:00 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. The employees who were instructed to call in at the earlier time were told they could keep their jobs, but the 1,700 employees who called in at 8:30 a.m. weren't so lucky: They were laid off by a voice on the other line that told them to stop working immediately, and had no opportunity for question or comment.

Unfortunately, A.R. found herself in the second group.

"The way they did this was so brutal and inhumane," she told HuffPost. "We were each assigned an employee number when we started working there -- an 'NM' followed by five digits -- and that's how I felt that day. Like a number, rather than a valued human being with feelings."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/17/rugmaker-lays-off-1700-vi_n_798442.html

[stray cat]

1. Welcome to the real world - no one consults the furniture in a house when a house is sold

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. Your assessment of what a human being is worth is understood and filed for future reference. -nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. +1

[AlabamaLibrul]

4. re

:puke:

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[gratuitous]

8. I didn't read that as an endorsement

But rather as a way to express how the company regarded its employees. And I agree, it's an incredibly heartless, not to say cowardly, way to handle their business decision.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Renew Deal]

17. But is it accurate?

Because that's how the company treated the employees.

[frylock]

9. .

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[nc4bo]

2. You can't get much more coldblooded than this.

Even the drug makers are downsizing. Can't imagine how any of those 1,700 must have felt.

But everything's fine. A-okay.

Big Pharma must be jumping for joy w/all the money saving they'll be doing along with the huge profits I'm sure they'll be enjoying shortly.

[Arctic Dave]

5. I thinking the management should buy security details with the savings

they are making because this is the type of shit that leads people to go postal. And guess what, I wouldn't blame them.

[MadMaddie]

6. Let's hear it for Corporate America!!

Yay!!:sarcasm:

These Corporations don't have the fucking guts to have an HR person or manager deliver the news. Many of those employees were probably high achievers and did a lot for the company.

This is why I think that we need to start looking at small to mid-size companies their services and their products.

Anyone want to bet that the CEO's and other top tiered workers get fat bonuses?

[HuckleB]

11. Uh, Dec. 2 was a Thursday. Nov. 30 was a Tuesday, and it was five days after Thanksgiving.

:shrug:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

13. I just copied and pasted and took the dates on faith...who knows. n/t

[HuckleB]

15. Oh, those are the dates in the HuffPo piece.

I just found it really odd.

[WestSeattle2]

14. Years ago, Qwest did the same type of thing. They called

employees in various cities into a conference call, announced they were being laid off, then had security lead them out of their respective buildings.

This OP really doesn't surprise me. There is certainly no shortage of callous and heartless human beings on our planet. I also have no doubt that this brilliant strategy was developed by some HR types, in their infinite wisdom.

While many companies consider employees to be "furniture", or a necessary evil, at least most of them pretend otherwise.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

18. I've posted this on DU several times before, but...

...I think it warrants posting again in this thread. I've owned my own company since 2001, but prior to that, I spent decades in "cubicle world." Some of those years involved tenure in H.R. departments...once, as an assistant H.R. Manager in a full-time job, another, as an H.R. assistant in a temp position while I was working my way through college.

So as a tenured H.R. veteran, I can confirm that H.R. people are some of the worst human beings on the planet. I know there are good people everywhere, but for the most part, H.R. departments contain misfits, people with no real talents or skills, just the ability to do the dirty work that needs to be done. You wouldn;t like H.R. people any more by BEING one of them unless you were ALREADY "one of them," and I was NEVER one of them. I was a guy who needed a paycheck and one of the ways I made that happen was working in H.R. when those opportunities were made available to me. But I got a true inside look at why so many people hate H.R. drones.

Anyone who has a conversation with an H.R. employee "in confidence" is a fool, because five minutes after the conversation, everyone in H.R. knows what that person said, and if they were complaining about someone else in the company, that person gets the full rundown as well.

They're gossips, they like stirring the pot and then jumping back and not getting any on them.

In the temp job, I was on the job for a few days and had no idea why I was there. There wasn't a work load to justify my being there. I had to keep asking for things to do, which I hate, because when it gets to that point, they dig up the worst possible filing tasks and stupid stuff you can imagine.

Two weeks after I was there, I found out why I was there. They had a massive layoff, security marching people out of the building, the whole nine yards, an efficient assembly line of human misery. They had to bring me in so that I was familiar with the company and the players and so that I could assist, but even though I was "one of them," they kept me in the dark until the day it happened...just like the people who were shown the door.

And the other thing I want to share, in case anyone here has any doubts, is that when you are laid off, either in a group of your peers or all by your lonesome, H.R. employees DO laugh at your sorry ass. I've seen people walk out the door for the last time with tears streaming down their cheeks and H.R. personnel laughing their asses off.

The best day of my life was the day I went into business for myself and left all of that crap behind. THE...BEST...DAY.

:patriot:

[Hannah Bell]

22. +100. in fact, anything you feel you need to say "in confidence" to anyone in a business setting

probably shouldn't be said.

nothing in business is "in confidence".

[Reader Rabbit]

16. My sister-in-law works for this company.

I know she wasn't laid off, but I am tempted to send her the link as if I don't know that—act as if I'm worried she might have lost her job. Just to see what she says.

[ohheckyeah]

20. check your email at 5:00 a.m.

to make a call at 8:00 or 8:30 a.m.? WTF? Isn't bad enough to fire someone over the phone without requiring them to get up at 5:00 a.m.?

[Hannah Bell]

21. sick.

[Golden Raisin]

23. Almost as lovely as where

I work when, during a corporate blood-letting, some employees found out they were fired when they showed up for work at the office and their ID/Security cards had been remotely deactivated and they couldn't even get into the office.