Subject: EDS

Dear Mr. Brown,

Before I was recently let go, I had been a faithful and dedicated employee of EDS for over 16 years. I always worked hard within a variety of technical areas, and have managed large EDS accounts transactions, including customer migrations, and billing. My work often required me to work 24 hours, weekends and holidays, and get up at two and three AM to solve problems. More often than not this work was uncompensated. During all of these years, my performance evaluations were always excellent and even this past year I was given a performance pay raise. I had always worked hard to meet all of my deadlines and to learn new technical skills. In fact I only recently transferred to the network software group so that I would have the opportunity to work in an area that offered advancement opportunities and was described by EDS management as being of eminent corporate need. 

You can imagine my horror when on October 11th I was told without notice that my services were no longer required and that I not only had no job, I would not even be allowed to interview internally or externally.  I am a woman who just turned 50 years old and I have been the primary breadwinner of my family. I have two children, one in college and one who had been planning to go to college when he graduates from High School this year. EDS was probably my last opportunity for retirement and was more importantly the main stay of my family so I appreciated my job. I felt that the growth and continued success of EDS was partly because of my work. When my children were babies I left them in daycare in order to assure that I would not be dependent on them when I got older.

Mr. Brown, you are the leader of EDS but you obviously cannot understand the implications of what the recent EDS firing and layoff policies have been doing to the corporation you are leading. Employees my age have been asked to accept a disproportionate amount of collateral damage and distress to their families. In this atmosphere, there is little chance that the one-month separation package will hold them over until they get a new job. Many will lose the homes for which they have worked so hard. As a corporation EDS is being systematically destroyed internally by poor decisions about whom to hire and fire. The fact is that many of the top employees who are key to the technical care of customers and internal support are being let go. The managers who decided how and whom to cut have sent a clear and compelling message to your remaining employees. None of those left believe that they will see their retirement and will be lucky if they even have a job next week.

While I doubt that this letter will get up the chain of command to communicate, at least I have tried to communicate. If this message does get to you, I would appreciate a decent response. I believe that I deserve it.

Sincerely,

Julia S. Follendore

^{(Click on}  edsreply.pdf  ^{to read the official reply that was sent to Julia from EDS.)}   

 

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