Some managers think experience is something you can fire and re-hire whenever it’s convenient.

So, what would you do if you found out a finance executive suggested laying off your most experienced team members simply because work slowed down temporarily?

Would you trust that leadership knew this was a bad idea? Or would you worry they were treating employees as line items?

In the following story, one man faces the latter as one company decides whether to do this very thing or not.

Here’s the story.

“Why don’t we just lay them off and get contract manpower when needed?”

Statement from someone right under the VP of Finance for the Americas at my company during the discussion to requote a job, mostly due to our shop rate increasing dramatically in October (original quote was in March).

For reference, we’re a prototype-based shop, not a production-based one, and regularly run into these ‘slower’ periods, as we also follow the automotive industry.

I was not invited into the meeting, but my boss (B) was there with the big boss (BB), along with the programs platform director (PD) and finance underling (FU), trying to review and push for the increase.

They were discussing costs and production.

According to my boss, this snippet went as follows:

(B, BB, and PD went back and forth, going over all the different costs, and were currently arguing about inefficiencies with not having ALL the parts in-house to be the most efficient.)

PD: I was also informed there are times when part of the shipments are delayed – how does that work with charging manhours if some of the parts are not in-house?

B: There is a surplus of parts to continue welding sub-assemblies, so as soon as the rest of the order arrives, the team can change the weld program over and just focus on the end items.

The boss couldn’t believe his ears.

FU: That doesn’t sound very efficient, why not just have them work on a different job then have them hop back on once ALL the parts are on location that way they can run all four programs simultaneously?

B: This is currently the only active job in-house – we literally turned away other work as this was going to occupy our weld cells to their full capacity. If we can at least get some of the sub-assemblies done, we’ll have a stockpile for when the rest show up – otherwise they’d just be standing around waiting on the parts.

FU: Well, that’s not OUR fault that there are no other jobs. Why don’t we just lay them off and get contract manpower when needed?

B: …

They’re going to let them know what’s decided.

BB: These are guys who have years of knowledge with weld programming, reading drawings, and general knowledge of the industry. I would advise against just laying them off and hoping we could find contracted workers that could fill the void on a shipment-by-shipment basis.

FU: We’ll be in touch after the directors review the current state of the program.

Had to go look up this woman on the org chart – looks like she hasn’t even been with the company for 3 years, and she’s talking about laying off some folks that have been here encroaching 20 years.

Wow! That’s some nerve!

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about what’s going on.

This reader thinks middle managers need to go.

According to this comment, the woman should be fired.

This reader warns that welders are in high demand.

This will be the day.

They may learn the hard way if they go through these plans.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.