Pushback Time?

By Mark Evans | Published: August 18, 2008

Over the past few months, it has not been easy being a Nortel employee as the company has aggressively restructured operations by slashing costs, shedding thousands of employees, and moving many jobs to lower-cost places such as Mexico, Turkey and China.

For the employees who have stuck around or managed to avoid being made redundant, you have wonder when there comes a point in time when they want to be rewarded for continuing to fight the good fight. Of course, keeping your job is reward enough but the question is whether that’s enough.

This may just be an isolated incident but 150 technicians in Monkstown, Ireland are staging a half-day strike over wage dispute. Terry Collins, a union spokesman, told the BBC that “It is time our members were paid back for all their efforts,” he said, adding the plant has slashed costs by £3m over the past 18 months.

Gven Nortel’s financial challenges and the uncertain economic environment, there may not be a lot of latitude for employees seeking more dough-ray-me but it looks like employees want a little love. The question is how you do it without having it cost you a lot more money.

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  • The Psychiatrist

    If Mr Z cut his salary by a mere 20 percent that would probably be enough for the top 5 percent of technicians to all get a pay increase or bonus of some sort for their hard earned efforts.

    Afterall if the BOD can agree to award the CEO a 20 percent pay increase for a tanking shareprice,I'm sure that approving some type of financial recognition for Nortel's top performing technicians would not be too much of a stretch.

    This culture of self entitlement in which we live has really gotten out of hand.

  • Nortelhand

    Nortel could give them some common stock, but that may cause them to strike if not break the equipment in a rage of anger. The only thing Nortel stock is good for is toilet paper.

  • KenNt

    You want to give 5% of 150 unionized technicians (7.5 ppl) a raise? LOL, yeah that would make them all feel better :)

    The top performers have already been getting additional money (raises) and stock options. Top performers have always been treated well at Nortel, especially considering the circumstances.

  • ex-nortel^2

    “Top performers have always been treated well at Nortel, …”

    Well, at least Mike is safe.

  • NewBlue

    “Top performers have always been treated well at Nortel.”

    Yeah, top performers who are well connected, as well as poor performers who are well connected. I've seen way too many solid engineers leave because they couldn't advance over similarly and lesser talented but better connected engineers.

  • Nortelwatcher

    NewBlue,
    You are absolutely correct and Nortel is no exception to the sometimes unjust benefits of politics in the workplace. However, I have seen Nortel take it to the next level. Here's what I mean.

    I know an expat who was not a good performer and thus didn't survive a layoff back a few years and thus had to return to the States. This person received a severance package and shortly before it ran out, was again re-hired for a position at their local address, again, despite not being a good performer.

  • Disgusted

    There is an overall culture of entitlement and resignation in Nortel.
    Nortel still could layoff about 10,000 people with no damage to the sales.
    I know lots of people being paid over 100K per year but putting about 2hours of work per day (especially tele-workers).
    The problem is; Zafirovski replaced all executives but the senior management is still the same, and it's not willing to take a look how much work their employees are putting in.

  • Tired

    Disgusted – are you kidding? Layoff 10K staff members, and it won't impact sales? I pray you're not running an organization at Nortel, because (no offense) your comments seem extremely myopic. Change staff levels to that extreme in one part of the business – R&D, support, ops, sales, etc – and it is absolutely going to have an ultimate impact on future sales in the business.

    And with regard to teleworkers, I know a huge number of them at many companies, and not one of them works less than 10 hours a day. Those that work 2 hour days are bound to fail sooner or later, or else their manager is a failure in not recognizing their limited contributions.

    As for your first comment – I agree – Nortel culture is heavily wrapped around entitlement. It needs to change…

  • Disgusted

    Tired, go and check the CISCO numbers. You should have at least 500K revenue per employee. There is something wrong with Nortel's employees or management if they can generate only about 350K per employee. What do you think it is?

  • less

    “Another element of [Sigma] success is ensuring measures are “leading” rather than “lagging.” Leading measures focus on the process, its inputs and suppliers, whereas lagging metrics focus on results or outcomes. Ultimately, the truly successful companies understand the cause-and-effect relationship between the leading and lagging measures.
    The saying “never solve a problem before its time” applies. Forcing a business (and its culture) to change to a new set of metrics can lead to resistance.

    So what to do? Effectively managing a continuous improvement initiative, such as Six Sigma, will produce a waterfall effect on metrics by not only identifying new ways to consider and measure what's important to the business, but also creating better data the current business metrics are based on.
    Last, metrics should be presented in a simple manner. Do not crowd as many metrics onto the dashboard as possible, but rather present the most critical seven-to-twelve metrics required to run the business successfully.”

    Simply put:
    Leverage the knowledge base of performance indicators to empower best-practice,
    result-driven, value-added, pinch-point paradigms of process-mapping synergies at the benchmark of proactive core business indicators, thus enabling value-added core competencies of proactive foundation trusts via strategic-fit clinical governance.

  • Tired

    Disgusted – I do agree that per your comparisons with Cisco, there is something wrong in the model. But I also question if it's a fair comparison. Cisco simply doesn't have the legacy customer base (and legacy solutions) to support that Nortel does, and hence Cisco is free to devote more resources to current and upcoming technologies. I'm very encouraged that Nortel seems to be much more forward-focused these days. I just hope that it's enough to turn those numbers around and get closer to the per-employee revenue numbers seen in Cisco. Thanks for your comments.

  • exnt2

    look i stuck around for 15 years thinking this company would turn around. /i have seen 6 CEOs but nothing. they kept saying this is the best time to buy the stock. good deal. I lost close to 100K in retirement, options, investments. my stock options are useless. they are priced at $1200 some at $400 others at $39 all worth nothing.

    i took the package and left. at least money i could get. some folks are not going to be that lucky as they will be transferred without packages. some will stick around but may get a reduced package. hear money is tight at Nortel and they are desperate.

    take the plunge. if you have thought of leaving now is the time. there is life after Nortel but at least you will not have the negativity, uncertainity and hopeless environment to work in.

  • broadbandbill

    Tired (and perhaps a bit too Hopeful),

    It is indeed a fair comparison. Let’s not forget that Nortel was formed over a century before Cisco was even a napkin and look at the results: Cisco is eating everyone else’s lunch and leaving only breadcrumbs. The reason for this is simple: Vision vs. Legacy. Cisco has vision while Nortel continues to hold on to its legacy. Do you ever wonder why Cisco did not foray its way into CDMA? And if it did, Cisco’s boys are much too strategic not to have dumped that ‘no-growth’ legacy crap years ago. Nortel had its chance but it takes courage to ‘eat your young’ before the market does. No courage, no glory.

    bb

  • outsidecanada

    Disgusted is right in a way. I dont think 10,000 more jobs should be axed bu somewhere around 2500. there are a ton of people who work only from 10-3pm not even the minimum 8 hours. most of these people are in Ottawa, Canada. you can never get them at their desk. they claim working from home but cannot be reached at the number provided. no response to email either. takes an entire day to get a response when they actually are in the office. this affects productivity as we have to cover. these people are in engineering, some in supply chain, some in services, some in marketing. every function. complacency has set in. people do not care anymore.

    people with huge fat salaries are still sitting around. although laid off 3 or 4 times they stil miraculously found something in the company due to internal contacts. they make over 150K because i am talking director level. they have accepted demotion working as junior managers but still keeping benefits, salary they are entitled to.

  • Tired

    Broadbandbill – I sincerely hope you're wrong and I'm right, but I think you can forgive my reasons. Like so many people, I have many friends, family, and business relations that are either employees or customers of Nortel. It's a tough thing to see great people and potential get swept aside. And I'm not comfortable with Cisco having even less competition. But your comments are well taken and make sense all the same. Cheers.

  • broadbandbill

    Tired,

    As ugly as it is, Darwinism is a beautiful thing…–bb

  • Observer

    And I'm not comfortable with Cisco having even less competition.

    Someone else will always fill the vacuum. The real problem with Cisco is just their prices are too high and no CIO or service provider wants their entire infrastructure hijacked by one vendor. As we head further into this bear market there will be consolidation in 2009 and new players in telecom, “services” and applications will emerge. Economically 2009 will be much worse than 2008 as the largest credit binge in the history of time continues to unwind. Nortel may not rise from the ashes when all is said and done but they will survive in one form or another (likely as an arm of Bell Canada or some other private equity company). By the way, Cisco is about to lose its way trying to compete in spaces where they have no core competency. That's why there's been an exodus of execs from there who've been around since the 90s.

  • Observer

    As ugly as it is, Darwinism is a beautiful thing

    well said. it is the cycle of life. birth, death and then rebirth by entities which were created from the genes of generations gone by.

  • less

    “Around 150 workers took to the picket lines outside one of the last of the Province's telecommunications electronics manufacturing facilities this week.

    Staff at Nortel at Monkstown have walked out on strike over wages.”

    Who needs staff when you have brass with vision.

  • less

    “Around 150 workers took to the picket lines outside one of the last of the Province's telecommunications electronics manufacturing facilities this week.

    Staff at Nortel at Monkstown have walked out on strike over wages.”

    Who needs staff when you have brass with vision.

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