Posted by Bill, a resident of the Fairmeadow neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 2:35 pm

I thought Meg Whitman was the woman who created thousands of new jobs.

Posted by Hmmm, a resident of East Palo Alto, on Sep 11, 2012 at 4:13 pm

What happened to all of the other good comments on this thread???????????? Did Meg put her giant, expensively-clad foot down 7the comments were removed?

Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 4:18 pm

Such a shame Meg is not in Sacramento whittling down the number on the government payroll! Perhaps that would make the state budget balance.

Posted by Greedy gains, a resident of the Greater Miranda neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 6:06 pm

Meg could care less about whittling down government employees. She was in it solely to cut her capital gains tax down to zero.

Naked greed. It was her in platform and she would have done it.

Posted by DDee, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 8:53 pm

So, they are going to use the pension money to pay for the downsizing. Slick!

In other words, the workers and their years of contributions made toward the idea of a decent life in retirement are going to fund the company's giving them the wham bam thank you maam in its reckless and totally anti-patriotic rush to bolster the gain for the few at the top of the food chain.

Oh, who needs a pension when you can get a cash buyout of 5 to 14 whole months of salary to live the large life as you sweat it out trying to find another job in a depression-era economy.

But I suppose that is ok if you take all the recent US presidents past and present at their word to the effect that "these jobs are going and not coming back, what we have to do is retrain for the jobs of the future."

Uhhhh, which jobs might those be, I ask, since these were those jobs that people went into debt to retrain for!?

I think that karma might be coming round and showing all these valley tech folk that maybe they should have unionized those jobs when back they had the chance!

Or hey, maybe they should be standing WITH the few remaining civil servants in the police, fire, schools and public services who are just trying to hold on to what they were promised by contract, instead of joining the fat cats who are in the process of blaming all our woes on government workers (I don't see any government workers pushing HP to fire American workers by the way, all the contrary) and directing our frustration against our own allies who now work with lower staffing levels at the compromise of their health, safety and ability to serve the needs of their middle American neighbors.

Some contracts, bonuses and whatnots are sacred, even if they are with well healed thieves.... the rest of our contracts and expectations of fair play, not so much.

Posted by musical, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 9:46 pm

I haven't seen the details of the HP plan yet, but usually with a solvent company nobody loses any of their earned pension, and employees close to retirement often get to receive a full pension a year or two earlier than expected, PLUS the lump sum severance payment. It is the shareholders who cough up $3.3 billion for 29,000 eliminated positions, averaging $114,000 to each employee out the door. The IRS will get its cut.

The downsizing will take until Oct 2014, two years away. I don't know HP's normal retirement rate, but with 350,000 employees it must be close to 10,000 per year. That's 20,000 who would leave anyway. 29,000 is akin to incentivizing one additional year's worth to retire early. Of course the numbers are not that simple, and some of the lay-offs are bound to cause significant hardship during this overall difficult economy. But the company should emerge in a stronger position to be a workplace where employees will prosper in the future.