I feel bad about any current or potential layoffs as this is a very difficult time to lose employment. One aspect that teaches all current PW employees would be to always keep your nose to the ground and listen to what's going on. NOT WHAT MANAGERS ARE SAYING, NOT WHAT HR IS PREACHING but what's actually going on. If you did so you would of known that there was already mentioning of layoffs in late Spring, early Summer of last year. PW was deep in the red since before then. Why do we think the VSP was offered in November of last year? Going into 2020 employees knew it was going to be a depressive, stressful, unrealistic goal achieving year. The writing was on the wall. Covid just pushed it faster. Layoffs were coming either way (Maybe not to this magnitude)... Especially when a VSP is offered and the older folks decide not to take it... really? What do you think would happen next.
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not gonna disagree with a lot of what you are saying. the narrative last year was V pays the bills until NG gets on its feet. the only red flag was when they were encouraging ppl to look for jobs elsewhere in the company earlier this year.
Expansionary more so in an optical illusion sense. Yes they were hiring college kids but were still struggling. Too many engine issues that kept them deep in the red. Like I said, there were rumblings about layoffs in April-June of last year. There is huge mismanagement going on there at the top. Why would you keep hiring left and right but every qtr ask to have millions of dollars in payments deferred to vendors. I can almost guarantee that 2019 should of looked worse on paper but payments due were pushed into Jan 2020, and probably the same continued throughout this year. It was more of a wishful thinking approach hiring and looking towards the future than what was actually occurring.
i think you are wrong about VSP last november being an indicator of impending layoff; i think that was cost management/expense control. pre-covid was expansionary for PW - lots of hiring new, cheap employees to replace experienced but expensive employees. Problem was PW geared up for the ramp in NGPF engine sales that was hit hard with drop in commercial aviation.
The obvious likelyhood of a big ISP (layoff) along with budget cutbacks and the notion that those who survived would be worked to death caused me to take the July VSP. Otherwise I would have worked another year or so before retiring.