Thread regarding Imperial Oil Limited layoffs

I worked for IOL for over 40 years and witnessed a change from the best company to the most miserable company to work for. The big mistake was creating a mine at Kearl when it would have smarter to build plants for in-sit-u recovery similar to Cold Lake. Once the decision for a mine was made there was a massive amount of upfront investment required and Exxon planted many of their home grown personnel into IOL to look after the back country Canadians. The Exxon thinking of myself first was soon apparent and now the company is full of incompetent middle management that are out of touch, lie to senior management and to there direct reports only to protect their careers. Working at the Kearl site or in the IOL YYC office is like a jail sentence compered to a career with an uncanny amount of unproductive administrative work and if the wrong "i" is dotted you loose your raise through a very cruel and harsh appraisal process where any person in the "secret meetings" that middle management have, can lie about you and there is no place in the process for rebuttal. The number of rules are so high that if you ask any contractor at Kearl if there are more preferred oil sand mine sites they will reply "All other sites are better", - contractors do not want to work there and they end up sending up their "D" team because these people don't know better.
The other item of note is the hours of work per week; expect 50-70 hours per week to keep your job as IOL mandates 5% turnover per year - so look around, if you are in a team of 20, then 1 will be replaced - so it is very competitive, many will steal your ideas and work.
IOL's future is uncertain and this is sad, the old timer's used to say, "Do it for the company" with no regard for hours or career and they used to like each other, teammates do not get along at the Calgary office (they do in the field). Each of the old timer's knew that if they made the company better then the company would treat them well in retirement. The workers can't think this way any more as the retirement plan has become very poor over the last 15 years and IOL may be gone.