Personal blog of Edge Lacorte

Today is the saddest day for all Dell Philippines employees.

Just this morning, the Dell management announced the closure of Dell Pasay. Teleperformance bought Dell Pasay for 200+ Million Pesos*, including the employees, the facilities, existing contracts and all the liabilities of the company.

The Dell Pasay management team gave their employees 4 days to decide whether to stay or leave. If they stay, Teleperformance will acquire them as regular-probationary employees (they will experience the benefits of a regular employee, but will undergo probationary evaluation, which means they can still be terminated within 3-6 months if they fail to perform as expected).

Dell reportedly allotted 7.5 Million Pesos for the retention/separation package to be given to all employees. All the employees shall be paid 1/2 times their monthly salary per year of service. This means if I have worked for Dell for 2 years, I will get a retention/separation package that’s equal to 1 month of my salary. If I choose to stay, the retention package shall be taxable, and non-taxable if I choose to leave. In addition to this, the employees also get to receive their very last ICP (the yearly performance bonus, which is normally 100 – 150% of their salary per cut off). All their remaining leave credits will also be carried over to Teleperformance if they stay. Employees who choose to stay will get the same basic salary, but the allowances shall be slashed off the package.

I was an employee of Dell Pasay for 1 year and 4 months until September of last year when I got fed up with selling. Now I realized that I have made the right move to transfer to ACS when I felt that I already needed to do so. If I stayed in Dell, I could have been one of the unfortunate guys who are crying at 7-11 with a bottle of beer while trying to survive the dilemma.

Updates:

• Retention bonus will only be given to employees who will stay after rendering 3 months with Teleperformance
• Before employees get to sign the contract with Teleperformance, they are required to submit a resignation letter addressed to Dell first. (forced resignation)

* – Info unconfirmed.

Update (May 15, 2009):

• 70 Employees sue Dell

As the Global Financial Crisis hit the Philippines and with major world economies at recession, the country is now reeling from the effects of slowdown of consumer demand around the world. And as such, it has been reported that the Philippine Semiconductor Industry is now struggling to keep their companies afloat.

Companies from the various sectors, particularly the semiconductor industry, have implemented cost-cutting strategies like reducing of work hours. Instead of the usual 5-6 days work week they now only have 3-4 days work week with production staff having rotating shifts within the week. Some companies also laid-off some employees either voluntarily or compulsory. This sector employs about 480,000 workers comprising 70% of Philippine exports.

Moreover, news break out that Intel Philippines has finally decided to close down its test & assembly plant in Cavite by February of 2009. The company has about 1,800 workers left after a big retrenchment it did in November of last year. Texas Instruments also laid off 392 of its workers from its Baguio City plant and is expected to let go of more workers.

In the IT sector, various companies like Dell International Services (Phils.) Inc. has decided to limit, if not remove, the company’s cash incentive program and to defer the salary increases of its employees in an effort to boost profitability. Accenture, on the Solutions side of it, recently laid off 500 of its workers in order to optimize staffing and skills of its employees in order to manage talent with the projects they have. The same goes with Lawson who also reportedly laid off some of its workers also.

This is all but a taste of the storm that is yet to come. The country is expected to feel the brunt of the crisis on the 1st half of the year and then to slowly recover after it. The country hopes that the BPO sector can provide 130,000 jobs this year to cover the loss in the IT/semiconductor sector. So my advise - stay and love your job, save enough money and be wise with your expenditures.

-Michael 1/23/2009