four months pay for three weeks work. Muahahahaaa
I was rather skint and eventually caved in and got a job at the local Nortel opto-electronics factory I swore I'd never work at. The first week of work constisted of health and safety training - ie sitting around being told how to use chairs and to wash your hands after you go to the toilet.

Then the actual job kicked in. I can't pretend I enjoyed it at all. My work consisted of plugging a chip into a machine, pressing a button and then waiting for the machine to test the chip. It took just long enough to be boring and was just short enough to not have time to do much else.
It was also a clean-room environment so we had to wear lab coats and couldn't bring anything inat all. We were allowed to have a radio in there as long as it was tuned to the local radio station. Fun place to be, eh?

Then after a week of soul destroying boredom, rumours started going round that there were going to be layoffs. I had mixed reactions about this - money was a definite plus, but I couldn't go on much longer without my brain dribbling out of my nostrils.

After a week of rumours, a meeting was called and we were told they would be laying off 5000 people, which was almost everyone, with immediate effect. Buses were laid on to take us home and we were sent out before anyone kicked off.

I got talking to a mate who lived near me. He had, for some reason called a taxi so we were still waiting when the TV crew got there. Everyone else had gone on the buses, so they only had us to interview. I said my bit about being pissed off, having a family to feed and it was a bit shite, and off they troggled and put me on telly. An ex-boss saw the interview and phoned me to offer me some work the next day.

I then got a letter from Nortel saying they were offering everyone the same redundancy pay - they'd finish the months pay and then pay another three months wages, even the people who'd only just got the jobs. Huzzah quoth I!
(teasus likes tea, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 8:48, 6 replies)

pay work
(TheColonel, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 9:00, closed)

ta!

(teasus likes tea, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 11:29, closed)

Paignton?
Had loads of friends working there - work a few months, get laid off, chunks of redundancy pay.
Wait three months or so and they'd be rehired and then repeat. Must have been idiots running the place.

Worked out well for me - they poached loads of engineers where I worked at the time with hefy pay increases. My employer had to up all our wages to keep us....and then nortel closed. Ha!
(inflateable, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 10:46, closed)

yeah paignton
That was when they closed for good. I had always said I wouldn't work there because a friend got moved down from their place upcountry somewhere then laid off after a couple of months. But yeah it worked out fine for me too...
(teasus likes tea, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 11:28, closed)

Paignton
Yeah, my dad use to work there. He got a good redundancy package. That place employed most of Torbay!
(RJWEcology is just sharpening his axe on, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 12:42, closed)

Had something similar
A few years back I worked for a large IT manufacturer who made me redundant after 6 months. The minimum redundancy payout was 6 months so I worked for half a year and got paid for a whole year. The money came in rather handy!
( SteamedCleaner, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 12:05, closed)