Thread regarding Chevron Phillips Chemical layoffs

Some of you are missing the irony here. I was also laid off. It happened to me too. I did not crumble because I had prepared for it.

I have always lived below my means. I carry zero debt. I built enough savings and reserves that I do not need to panic when a company makes a decision that ends my employment. That is what I meant by creating your own guarantees. Companies do not exist to carry you. If you believe they do, you have already lost.

Here is the absolute hypocrisy. CPChem is giving out a generous severance package even though it is not required to pay a single cent beyond the last paycheck. You call that betrayal. It is not. It is a company giving you a cushion it does not legally owe you. You cannot scream exploitation with one hand while cashing the checks with the other.

And let’s be clear on the other claims.
• Power imbalance: True, a company impacts more people when it makes a decision. That does not erase the fact that both sides can and do walk away when it suits them. The scale is different, but the principle is the same.
• Ethics and deception: Nobody argued for lying. Ending an employment relationship is not deception. It is reality.
• Consequences: Yes, losing a job is tough. That is why you prepare for it. The company does not owe you insulation from consequences. That is your responsibility.
• “Nurturing”: Companies are not parents. They owe you a paycheck, not emotional protection. If you confuse those, you will always be disappointed.
• Culture and loyalty: Culture is a tool. Companies use it when it serves them. Employees enjoy it when times are good. But culture does not override the transactional nature of employment.
• Self-reliance: Not everyone can build the same cushion, but the fact that some people do not prepare does not magically create an obligation for the company to cover them.
• “Cold-hearted”: Calling reality “cold” is not an argument. It is just a complaint that reality does not feel good.

I am living it. I took the hit. I am moving forward because I prepared. That is the lesson whether you like it or not.

@9ys Hop back into your Di-kens novel, Scrooge, before you commit another act of self-parody. You and I both know you'd be playing the "victim" if any of your rhetoric was applied to you.

@9ys Nice job, Dog. This is some well-composed hypercapitalist bullsh-t.

1. Corporations and people don't have the same power and influence in making market decisions and the consequences of those decisions. When a company lays off hundreds of people, it has an impact not just on those employees but also on the community. If a company offshores jobs, like CPChem is doing, it affects thousands. This why these business decisions are newsworthy. If I quit, I may impact my team, but the impact is really limited to me.
2. I agree employment is, when you get down to it, transactional. But ethics still apply. Mutual trust is not created by the economic exchange between employer and employee. If you lie to employees or break the company's own ethical norms, that's called deception.
3. Employees who are laid off can't just walk away from their jobs without having an existential crisis — they lose income and healthcare and possibly their homes .The employer determines the conditions of the employee's exit. If I quit, the consequences for the company and the market are not equal.
4. Your point about the expectation employees have of being "nurtured" is manipulative. And offensive coming from someone at CPChem. Employees don't expect to be nurtured. They expect fair treatment, respect, and transparency. You're casting a company's ethical responsibility as emotional weakness in employees.
5. By reducing work into a bloodless transaction between equals, you're ignoring the purpose of company culture: promoting social bonds and creating company identity and loyalty. These are employee values that in good times the company happily exploits.
6. I agree employees need to make their own "guarantees" when they can, but that's independent of your argument. Very few people can exist totally self-reliant. Suggesting it's the universal hedge against market fluctuation is is an attempt to absolve the company of responsibility for its decisions.
7. You're equating human value with worker productivity is some cold-hearted sh-t.. Kind of Industrial Revolution thinking, isn't it? You're about 200 years out of date.

@9ys What you say is obviously the way the company feels today. But, it is a realively new attitude. For 25 years the company has been focused on safety, and proudly promoted a family style relationship with all employees. Maybe you are too young to remember, but it was heavily promoted as a culture.

Apparently, they simply woke up and said, the he-l with all of this goodness and culture. Employees are nothing, and because they are nothing, the focus on safety can be reduced as well, which it has been. After all, employees are just a number, and if somebody gets hurt, well, it's just business.
Many of those faceless numbers no longer feel any need to be loyal. I think this has already become the predominant attitude on both sides of the same coin. A house divided cannot stand, and unfortunately, it will not.

@9ys I think what happened here was the company fostered a culture of family and loyalty etc. with their employees for many years. And now, the exact opposite. So, I can understand the anger some employees have. This is normal behavior in the tech world, but not in an old time chem company that still has pensions etc.

The comments here miss the point. A company owes its employees nothing, and employees owe their company nothing. Employment is an arrangement, nothing more. Both parties are there to serve their own interests for the time the relationship exists.

Companies have to do what they need to do to survive. That may mean layoffs, shutdowns, acquisitions, or other abrupt changes. Employees do the same every day when they find better pay, better conditions, or simply a lifestyle change that suits them. Quitting is not treated as betrayal. It is just choice. So why is a company’s decision to end the relationship treated as some moral failure?

Employment is not family, not loyalty, not charity. It is a trade: time, skill, and effort for compensation. When either side no longer finds value in that exchange, they walk away. That is not cruel, it is reality.

If you want guarantees, create them for yourself. Save money, build skills, diversify your options. But stop pretending that corporations exist to nurture you. They exist to generate value for themselves, just as you work to generate value for yourself.

@9t7 The severance package is full of legalese. Take solace that even if you sign, you cannot sign away your rights forever based upon whatever they tell you today. It will eventually come to light that the demographic information provided has been spun and is not the whole story. At some point a whistle blower will come clean and will provide information on the conspiracy to defraud the ADA protections as well as a very large group of employees. You know it, I know it. What they are trying to do is absolutely illegal. There are some who are already very uncomfortable supporting leadership and will come forward to make an immunity deal with the feds. No one is willing to risk prison time to support this so called CIO or CEO. Whatever you have already signed will be just as worthless to them as their own lies. Just be glad you are not attending the ongoing sh-t show that is happening every day across all the business. Live free with an unburdened heart.

@9sv..we can still go to the EEOC and file a complaint even though we’ve signed the severance agreement. The EEOC can still investigate them and look into the age discrimination claims and fine them!

They don’t want justice. They want silence.

HR is corrupt. HR doesn’t protect employees. HR doesn’t protect the company. HR only protects itself.

The “investigations” are a sham. Biased. One sided. Retaliation ignored. Complaints buried. No accountability.

And the managers they protect? Let’s call it what it is. The so called leadership team at BGR and ORA are little more than glorified supervisors. The other leaders go at CED,SWE,PA. Inept. Incompetent. They make decisions they don’t understand, waste money, and cover their failures by blaming the very people who keep the place running.

How many times have jobs been delayed because of their bad calls? How many projects have gone over budget because they chased the wrong suppliers or ignored obvious risks or worse we planned it wrong? How often do they cut corners just to look good on paper, only to dump the fallout on the crews later? That isn’t leadership. That’s incompetence with a title.

And now HR hands out severance like hush money. Sign this and you get a check. Sign this and you give up your right to sue. That’s not a benefit. That’s intimidation.

Wrongful termination. Hostile workplace. Retaliation. Discrimination. It’s all here. And it won’t stop until people fight back.

They want us quiet. They want us scared. We should be neither.

It’s time to sue. It’s time to expose the corruption. Even if you anonymously share with media outlets. You are doing something!

@9my Chevron would pretty much have to get rid of upper management, even if only to rebuild CPChem culture. CPChem at HQ is virtually unrecognizable right now. Morale su-ks. No one trusts a word that comes out of LT's mouths. Can't wait for Town Hall.

@9n1 Isn't some of the LTE attending the emergency meeting? That sounds like Chevron is still including upper and mid-level leadership in all its planning — not intending to get rid of any of them. Unless I don't know the whole story, which is likely.

@9my What emergency meeting?

@9mx If they do buy Chevron Phillips they will get rid of most if not all of the upper management. HR will will dissappear as well. Don't you wonder why there was an emergency meeting? It's not just the low level employees getting cut. Upper management is about to experience this as well.

@9fw my friend was high up in HR at Hess. They had 80 people in their group. Chevron is only keeping one person.

Hess had 85 in procurement. Chevron is keeping 7.

@9ef Haha. That was some privileged ivory tower HQ bullsh-t by someone who still has a job but is fantasizing about becoming a "victim" and trying to be profound.

@9h2 HR is not your friend. They are there to protect the company and document employees they see as problems. The company has all the power unless you have concrete proof that they have broken some law. Even then it will be hard to do anything. Be mindful.

Well If Chevron acquires the Phillips stake in Chevron Phillips, I hope they also bring in their own HR team!!!

@9ej In the Hess integration did Chevron move some of its employees into jobs where the Hess employee had been laid off?

Is there an imminent sale to Chevron and this is part of the agreement? Then, the integration will be as fast as Hess acquisition.

@9df There are CPChem employees why buy Louis Vuitton purses?

@9df There won't be many people left by the time they are done. Don't think because you are close to the process you are safe. You are not. They are already working up plans to get rid of as many people as possible regardless of your position. It will all be ran by the contractors. You have been warned.

@9ck I don't think they showed a lot of discretion over who was laid off the first round. They didn't only cull out people from a pool of redundant managerial and other positions. In some departments they virtually destroyed capacity i by laying off the experts responsible for those areas. This means CPChem can no longer perform these functions or someone less qualified or unqualified will be given them in addition to their existing duties. The outcome there is predictable and it didn't matter to CPChem. There's a reason for that. No company who is merely cost cutting but wants to maintain a level of service does that.
Also: CPChem believes they're doing the best they can for their laid off employees. They have bigger fish to fry right now and being unsuccessful there would have horrible consequences for customers and suppliers, etc. On the employee level, though, being laid off is is a form of ego death. If we're an employee in good standing, we don't think about the possibility of losing our livelihood and the ability to take care of ourselves and our family. We often don't realize how much our identity and self worth is wrapped up in our job success and that number on those biweekly paychecks. You'll look around your house at your possessions, your families' possessions kicking yourself at the excessive spending because you "could afford it." Everything you see and the car you drive and the house you're living in may have to be sold to keep you and your loved ones from becoming unhoused. You'll feel like a fraud going shopping for essentials with that Louis Vuitton purse you may have to sell eventually. Your self worth is decimated. You are not an earner anymore. You're a discard. You're anxious all the time, you can't sleep, and your family is nervous. You're eyeing your life savings, which may take decades to rebuild. If you still have a job at CPChem, take control of your career now and don't rely on your manager, HR or anyone else to save you from this. Don't accept on faith any words of reassurance from people who claim to know what your fate will or won't be. And if you have already been laid off, I'm thinking about you, sending you good vibes. It may feel like the end of the world, but it's not. Believe in yourself.

@9cs Yep, the 130 people they just let probably equates to about $26 MM, we got a long way to go to get to $300 MM. Do the math! Next few months are going to be brutal so just get used to seeing people let go and pray you’re not one of them.

@9ck Wait until September and especially October. It’s about to get really interesting. Hope everyone is saving up a nest egg to get by.

@99w warning. Whoever is left. If you get interviewed do NOT tell them everything! They are trying to figure out what other jobs they can take. You have been warned.

@99q Ditto! I’m sure a lot of people will celebrate when that happens- I only hope it really comes to fruition- couldn’t happen to a more deserving CIO

@981 If and when Chevron does buy their half from Philipps, they will boot every one out starting from CIO, her extended family, friends, neighbors and who ever left, that includes her cronies. Not even CEO will be spared.
Guess what goes around comes around. Can't wait to see that.

@981

News flash! Chevron already owns 50%. The only seller could be P66, of which would get sc--wed.

This company is for sale. Chevron is going to buy them. They are getting rid of as many people as they can presale. That's is why they dont care about who, how or preservation of culture.

@93s more than two words for people like you. Feeling guilty about laying off good people?

@93g When I read comments from people like you, just two words come to mind.

Just wait and see when it hits the fan. All these LTI contractors, offshore personnel and especially d-mb IT managers would do nothing but blame on layoffs for the mess that was created by CIO and her decisions.

@90j younger isn't always better. You need a mix to help mentor the next generation. If you like spending extra money on re-work by all means go ahead at let go of all the experienced employees. You won't be saving any money or time.

@8zn Because everybody is replaceable and you are just a number. The sooner you accept that the better it will be for you. Time to move on. And let’s stop using the length of your employment as a basis or reason for keeping your job. Let’s accept we are all too set in our ways of working and do not like to accept change. Time to hand off to younger generation.

@8qg threatened , coerced, blackballed, this is the way of CP Chem HR.
It’s sickening.

@8zn Good ole boy network

Why the heck they are keeping the d-mb IT managers but letting go of the experienced professionals there were with the company almost since it started?

@8vq True elsewhere in CPC, too. By taking teams by surprise with these layoffs, there was no time for exiting workers to download what they knew about ongoing projects before that knowledge and expertise walked out the door for good. If they'd been allowed to retire or take early retirement, the transfer of knowledge could have happened. I get that everyone's just a number and the thinking here is ruthless with no allegiance to anything or anyone but the bottom line. But CPC sc--wed itself needlessly. Kind of funny when you think about the hype around Human Performance. CPC has zero credibility. CPC culture is a house of cards. Absolutely no commitment to its own "values." None of us left should expect much going forward.

@8tr They have a magic number they are going by. Each employee costs the company anywhere from 100 to 150k+. Do the math. How much is that in savings? Be prepared to not get any real help as IT will now read from a generic form to help resolve your issues. They have no idea how the plants work. Reality is going to hit them like a ton of bricks and ending up costing more than saving.

@8qg
If you worked for IT and located at Corporate HQ, and are 59+ YEARS OF AGE, you were selected for layoff. No other demographic age can claim this fact.

Spin it how you want, but it's age discrimination at its finest. And a huge intentional loss of Intellectual Property. Sounds like they intend to create a crisis of NO CONFIDENCE.

Considering the cost will be much higher now that LTI knows they were lied to on required duties in order to bring a low ball preliminary cost to LT. It makes me wonder what their true reason for the layoffs are, since cost reductions will no longer be realized.