CEOs/High-level Execs will take a pay cut, or go unpaid for a bit?

We are getting another mince pie this year as well...Wonder if this one will be stuffed in a4 envelope and posted to us like the last lot <Wish I was kidding>

AC as they might tamper with my mince pie.

A brilliant bit of synergous whalesong there.

Our place is in a bit of a pickle too at the moment, and our MD has forfeited his salary until cashflow improves.

Shame not all the other companies are willing to do that.

My contract says I get a yearly salary + some holiday. Let my bosses start fecking with that and see where it gets them.

I think I'd start building up to a serious bout of man flu now...

I can see that there may be some small savings in power and so forth, but the real costs of staff, kit and facilities are largely fixed. All I can see here is a possible productivity gain in 2009.

CSC employees (at least in the US) can *not* accrue any new vacation time through the 1st quarter of 2009. So after they use their mandatory 7 days before Christmas, and if they don't have any other vacation days banked up, they won't be able to take ANY time off until April '09.

Nice..

The 'saving'is in NOT having to attribute costs from project budgets to all those days that would otherwise be 'worked' - all those staff have to book time to something when they are in the office.

Forcing people to take their annual leave means that the books will look better - project managers do not incur seven days of fees on all their staff - that's a 35% cost reduction for December or 10% for the final quarter of the year.

It's purely temporary and has no long-term benefit, all they are really doing is pushing costs into the next quarter. EDS used to (probably still does) stamp hard on 'unneccesary expenditure' towards the end of every quarter to try and meet targets. It's quite common and particularly American.

our boss wants staff to come in over the Christmas period (we normally all bugger off) - something about wanting the phones answered. Let the rest of the company take Christmas off is our reply !!!!

Mines the one with a life and Christmas pressies for the family

I don't know how CSC's accounting works but many companies that are doing this have a vacation pay fund that accumulates the $ as employees earn the vacation. By forcing the employees to take accumulated vacation they get to pay them out of that fund rather than operating $.

"CSC employees (at least in the US) can *not* accrue any new vacation time through the 1st quarter of 2009..."

Is that by business unit? I have not seen anything like that for my team.

"not accrue" may mean that they are forced to take whatever vacation they earn during that period, in other words their vacation balance cannot increase. I've seen that done elsewhere, but usually over a longer period than a single quarter.

"Is that by business unit?"

It must be... I got wind of it from a buddy of mine who works for CSC in the Midwest. We assumed it was company wide.

They figure that come April, there will be another large round of layoffs. (after getting 3 months of work out of them, and not having to paid for accrued vacation during that time)

The thing that I find so funny about this is that they have implemented a "managed" vacation plan. And with usual <sarcastic> brilliant </sarcastic> execution, they wait until the end of the fracking year to tell those of us with substantial amounts of vacation built up, we need to burn most of it prior to 3/31.

OK, I can actually accept the managed vacation policy, as it does limit some financial liability that the company is responsible for, when they eliminate employees. But waiting until the end of the year and telling technical staff that they have to put all of their revenue generating projects on hold and burn vacation, is just plain stupid.

We've had a lot of idiots in power positions at CSC but Rick's takes the cake. And I haven't figured out if he and his minions are positioning GOS to be placed on the auction block or if they've come to that last act of desperation, because they've mismanaged the company so badly?

If the internal rumors are true, which I wouldn't be surprised if they are (as this is outrageous enough to come from the upper tier of CSC), IF an employee is unable to comply with the managed vacation policy, they are identified as "high risk" and will be placed on a possible RIF list.

Just a personal note to Dick:

News flash numb nuts, instead of beating all of the mules to death, why don't you reduce some of the endless ranks of upper middle management that you've personally had a hand in creating? Most of those morons are redundant bean counters and we're a fucking technology company... How many accountants and managers do you need generating pretty pie charts and power point spreadsheets showing that we're leaking money like a sieve, because your ego won't allow you to accept the fact that you are simply wrong.

If you're not careful, you'll steer us down the same path as the American auto industry, if you aready havent (but just don't know it yet).

Agree with previous post hinting the same: This is just an excercise to limit the company's costs in reducing the work force. Hard to know how to play this type of game...icon attached for more detail.