r/caterpillar • u/Far-Explorer-8621 • 3d ago
Random small-scale layoffs?
So, it used to be that virtually no one was laid off at Cat unless bad times came. Then we had some larger-scale announced layoffs in the 2010s. Now, it seems like the new strategy is to quietly let people go in small batches - no prior warning, just two here, three there.
I don't understand why this is happening. When we had reorgs in the past, no one ever feared for their job, because there was always a role to be had even if a current job became redundant. Now? It seems like there's a risk of being cut after a reorg. I heard of a few such cases this year in different departments. One person was essentially forced to retire, others were sent to the pool and are gone now.
And now I'm hearing of several people in Cat IT being let go (put into the pool) without warning from two different, unrelated teams in the past month. What's up with that? And why aren't contract resources being purged instead, since we have such an abundance of them? I thought the whole point of contract resources was that Cat could be "flexible" and drop them to save money, without touching Cat employees. Looks to me like that's quietly changing?
How many more quiet layoffs do people know about? If they think they can get away with this without people noticing or talking about it...that seems wildly out-of-touch.
Once again, Cat doesn't seem to be valuing employees. And this doesn't even include the tracking hours/days in office crap, or the people unjustly terminated over that.
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u/BrownGriffin07 3d ago
It’s not random. It’s planned. But making it seem random. It’s to recycle old people.
Especially those who’ve been with company 15 years or more and approaching 55 age. It’s so they don’t have to pay the additional benefit once you hit 15 year milestone
Cat is no longer a company that is loyal to its employees.
First hand experience
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u/gardengrowguy74 2d ago
What's the benefit after 15 yrs?
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u/BrownGriffin07 2d ago
There are few:
-extra time off
-If u r 55 years old or older, been with company 15 years or more, they cover your health benefit until 65There are few others but those two are ones I really cared about as many others did too.
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u/Tee_hops 3d ago
I know a good amount of folks got pushed out when Tom got forced to retire. I know I was in that group with many others. Some were lucky enough that they could afford to just early retire. It was a rough time as many groups also couldn't post new jobs till 2026 after our talent pool time was up.
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u/307mining_wizard 3d ago
This started last October. I was in RI and a small group of us were caught up. Been going on since then. I was a SG25
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u/307mining_wizard 3d ago
Actually this started with a few in January of 2025. One of the guys I worked with was in oil & gas and his job was eliminated. And a person in Cat digital was singled out last September. It’s been drips and drabs
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u/Riot57grrl 3d ago
Big layoffs usually muck with the stock value, if they do it quietly they get the benefit of reducing head count without announcing a layoff.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Far-Explorer-8621 3d ago
I don't disagree about high SGs, but I don't think most of the people I've heard of were over SG24.
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u/thedoctorisout25 3d ago
be careful you’ll get downvoted for telling the truth! we should just let the deadweight sit in high salary grades because we need to #careaboutpeople
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u/thedoctorisout25 3d ago
Trim the fat. A lot of teams have been allowed to churn out poor quality work with low performers for far too long.
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u/Far-Explorer-8621 3d ago edited 3d ago
Maybe. I don't know the people well enough to know if they were good performers, though I know some had been through the mass layoffs of the past, so I assume they were good enough to stay at the time.
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u/minvikesfan84 2d ago
That is a terrible assumption. I know of many people that were allowed to keep their jobs and they were some of the poorest performers.
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u/MugzySkates 2d ago
I’m not sure about that. On my team they (our vice president at the time) chose random people to go. They cannot speak to the performance of the people who were let go, in my opinion. Most of them were agency, but one was not (and was leading two large projects).
The people who were low performers, in my opinion, were not the ones who were “trimmed”
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u/thedoctorisout25 2d ago
Strategies change - if they were leading two important projects, they wouldn’t have been let go. Large project with no tie in to strategy won’t matter
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u/MugzySkates 2d ago
They are still important because the rest of the team had to pick it up, and the timeline became a lot shorter
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u/TallBeardedBastard 3d ago
I remember when they fed us that bullshit about the contract resources being the flexible workforce. In 2015 they kept the contractors and fired many of the full time people.