Layoffs, acquisitions, economy, companies. sm - CuriousMT

With the economy the way it is, layoffs happen.  Do you really think that companies like to lay people off?  If they lay people off, there is less being transcribed and less being invoiced and less profit lining their pockets. 

While I agree that email seems a cold way to lay people off, what option did they have?  Everyone works remotely, right?  If they started to make phone calls, it would've caused a panic for those who weren't being laid off.  This way, they could do it all at once.  What difference would a call make?  The bottom line is that we still would've been laid off.

I am angry, sad and worried but I am realistic.  My husband is an electrician.  He has been without work since April 2009, over a year now.  He has over 1200 people ahead of him for jobs at the union, and they are starting to tell people to start training for other jobs, looking for other lines of work.  Being an electrician used to mean that your future was set, that you would have work and OT to keep your bills paid and food on the table.  The pay is better than most of the other trades, so we have a bigger house than we might have, and the bigger mortgage to go with it.  At least 1/4 of the houses in my neighborhood are either in foreclosure or short sales.  None are selling.  Some people have just packed their belongings and moved in the middle of the night because they were embarassed to let people see that they were abandoning their homes, homes that they worked hard to get and tried desperately to save.

We are lucky as transcriptionists; there are still jobs to be had.  I sent out my resume to 5 companies yesterday, followed up with 5 phone calls and had 3 offers already.  I took one and it's actually 1/4 cent higher per line than with WMX.  Some people don't have those options; they have a skill or degree that is useless right now.  I know of people with MBAs that can't get jobs.  There are not even retail or fast food jobs open right now in our area because those that have the jobs are hanging on to them as tightly as they can.

Yes, layoffs are bad, but WMX is going to survive this and other companies are going to lay people off and others are going to grow.  Unfortunately, this is the world we live in right now and no matter how we try to fight it, we can't change it.  We can just ride it out.  History proves that we will come out of this, just not today or tomorrow.