HP reported much lower earnings than projected, likely due to the recent toss-up of their business strategy and leadership. Unfortunately for HP employees, this translates to a significant reduction of workforce. Almost 10% of the total workforce of over 300,000 employees will be cut with approximately 27,000 losing their jobs.
HP seemingly randomly decided to change focus last year. The plan was to move from a PC and peripheral maker that also makes tablets, printers, and other technology products to one more similar to IBM with system integration and commercial software and hardware solutions. After axing the HP Touchpad project and selling them for almost nothing, HP made an about face, fired its CEO, and reset its sights on its prior strategy of making PCs.
Letter to the Meg Whitman, HP CEO
From: George McCasland
Date: Wed, May 23, 2012 at 6:33 PM
Subject: Announced Layoffs
To: Meg Whitman
Dear Ms. Whitman,
Dads House has free information that will be needed by many of those facing a layoff from your company.
I would like to suggest that HP send out a notification to all those people being laid off that if they have a child support obligation, they can get help from their state to have the order modified. That they need to make the official request the moment they have been notified they are listed for release, as it can take up to a year to get a hearing.
This is a right they have under the 1988 Child Support Enforcement Act, and is detailed in the Federal Child Support Enforcement Handbook for Non-Custodial Parents. Unfortunately, the states refuse to distribute the handbook, which is free from the feds. Here is the material from it.
http://ChildSupportRights.org
If you are willing, here is a small poster that can be displayed in the employee break rooms with the above link.
http://dadshousedocs.org/ChildSupportRightsAD.pdf
I hope you will consider my request, and perhaps have one of your assitants respond to confirm you have received it. You are experiencing some public relations issues right now with this decision, and this might help it.
George R. McCasland, National Moderator
Dads House Educational Center & Groups
http://DadsHouseEdCtr.org
Postscript:
Took me a while to find a contact address, and I cc’d it to their Craig Gomez, Media Relations VP, as a backup.