Attended the Boeing Layoff briefing today and came away surprised at some of the benefits that I didn’t know were there. First item was that I qualify for Medical retirement benefits since I’m within 6 years of early retirement. After having been worrying about losing this benefit, it came as a relief to know that I didn’t.
The other big area is that Boeing is considered covered by Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). In Washington this could be huge. It means there is money for additional education, extended benefits for unemployment and a big one is that they will pay 80% of the cobra payments and we will have to pay 20%.
The session was planned for 2 ½ hours ran 3 1/2 and was packed with information. May attend again to make sure I got all the information. I also found out that because of my situation, my wife as a homemaker also qualifies for training and other benefits—not through TAA but through special state assistance.
I have a lot to process from this meeting. And urge everyone to attend these as soon as you can. There are a lot of resources out there provided by the company and by the state. Need to partake in the Boeing provided resources as best I can before the layoff date and should start using the state resources as soon.
Another high point today was being able to coach another co-employee with a warn notice through some tough emotional stress. I pray that it was helpful. Basically my advice was to not bottle up your emotions and instead try to fully feel them and to communicate them to others as best you can (hopefully in a loving manner). This blog is helping me communicate the emotions that I have been going through. Next advice was to reach out to give help and to receive help from others. I’m fortunate to have Boeing coaching resources and professional counselors that I can call upon. This coaching today was a way that I could reach out and to help someone else. This has helped me feel better and more complete about myself. Reach out and help someone if you can.
Because of my networking, many people have been making contact with me on a daily basis. This has nurtured my soul over the last week and has made a great difference in my ability to move forward. Thank you one and all.
A scary point of the day was a friend circulated an article New Atlantic Article. It talked about how for every job opening in US there are 6 people looking. I believe I have the skills that are needed in this new economy. The scary part is I might not find out until it is late in the game. I have to develop the resiliency not to let the bad news of the press get me down. This news is always out there and is not going away. What I can control is my reaction to it. A great book to read on the three mega trends that are influencing the world’s economy today is Hot, Flat and Crowded, I highly recommend this book to everyone.
I applied for another job at Boeing today. Maybe stretching the qualifications on this one a bit—we will see. I found out that two of the jobs I applied for Monday rejected me. I’m still up for consideration on the other jobs. This is another place where I will need to learn how to take the rejection of many job applications in stride. I have so much learning to do.
Tomorrow Resume and Interviewing workshop.
inSite Group: 43 members
Jobs applied for: 14
Rejections: 2
Job Posting withdrawn: 1
It's good to see that there are lots of resources for those of you still at the office, my beginning and ending of the WARN notice was my manager sending me my WARN notice and my 60 day in an email, no conversation, no telling me about all these benefits, nothing.... I'm out on a short term disability related to an EEOC/Ethics complaint so they're probably just glad to be done with me, its good that at least they're supporting 'some' folks.
ReplyDelete