Redundancy/ what next.?

[Dodgy69]

After 26 years with a vehicle manufacturer I'm being made redundant, starting 12 weeks notice this week on 100% then final payout on October 9. Furloughed since march 16.

Am I bothered, yes and no. I'm 53 so no pension yet. I've been thinking about a complete change. No more factory, don't want shirts.

I've got plenty of spare time to maybe retrain, but what.???

If you was in this position, what would you do next.??? Hoping you good folks might have some sterling ideas.

[weeksy]

After 26 years with a vehicle manufacturer I'm being made redundant, starting 12 weeks notice this week on 100% then final payout on October 9. Furloughed since march 16.

Am I bothered, yes and no. I'm 53 so no pension yet. I've been thinking about a complete change. No more factory, don't want shirts.

I've got plenty of spare time to maybe retrain, but what.???

If you was in this position, what would you do next.??? Hoping you good folks might have some sterling ideas.

Me, i'm unlikely to do the same as yourself as it depends on your skills etc. If i were in a position where i could take a pay-cut i'd be doing a cycling spannering job i think, either as a monkey in a bike shop or maybe even on my own. Starting off as a generic spanner monkey but the trying to specialise in suspension and tunning ideally.

2nd choice would be a unit and do both motorbike sales and valeting. Assuming people would pay for both a quick wash as well as a premium service and have dedicated areas within the workshop/outside for quick wash and blow dry along with a full wheels out and stripdown type clean.

Whether any of these would pay the bills, i don't really know.

[v8-powered]

Railway is a good place to be, rolling stock maintenance can be a good number and they take a lot of contract staff so you can keep your flexibility....

[KungFooBob]

Move to America and become a Stuntman / part time Bounty Hunter.

[Tomcat]

That kinda depends on what transferable skills you've got. If you're talking about retraining in a field where you've got nothing existing you're gonna be competing with cheaper, fitter 16 year olds.

If you're looking to work with your hands maybe think of plumbing, electrickery or similar. Just expect to have to work for your money and live without an guarantee of steady employment.

[Taipan]

Two people I went to school with have done very well for themselves in unexpected industries. One cuts lawns and cleans wheelie bins and other associated garden things including holiday plant watering, autumn leaf clearing etc! The other does that false grass stuff. He not only supplies and fits it, but makes more money doing repairs and the top earner is cleaning it!

[Mussels]

After 26 years with a vehicle manufacturer I'm being made redundant, starting 12 weeks notice this week on 100% then final payout on October 9. Furloughed since march 16.

Am I bothered, yes and no. I'm 53 so no pension yet. I've been thinking about a complete change. No more factory, don't want shirts.

I've got plenty of spare time to maybe retrain, but what.???

If you was in this position, what would you do next.??? Hoping you good folks might have some sterling ideas.

I assume that was a typo and should be shifts.
Difficult to say what you should do as I don't know your circumstances. If bringing in a wage is critical then don't wait around for your training to net you a job immediately when the wages run out, that is unlikely to happen.
If my industry dried up and I had no transferrable skills then I'd look into something reasonably easy to get into but unfashionable, probably a plumber's assistant for a while but many jobs like that will involve some unsociable hours. I'd also look at delivery driver as they probably like an older chap in the job who is less likely to ruin the van.
Do treat job descriptions with scepticism, they may ask for loads of qualifications and experience but often personality makes a big difference so after an interview the manager may think 'he hasn't got the knowledge but he'll fit in to the team well so we are prepared to train him'. Apply for loads of jobs, if you think you have a 5% chance of the job you want then apply for 10 times as many places as a chap who thinks he has 50% chance.

[Dodgy69]

Thanks for replies gents...

Gonna have a week in whitby next week and decide shortly after. Did look at class 2/c training but pay seems poor for the £1500 training required unless you do a 60 hr week. My mate said I could join him on the taxis but it's a bit quiet without the school contracts. He does early starts so no pub stuff, bit different.
There does seem to be quite a few van driving jobs but often self employed van owners, not sure about that. Still on books until October 9 with pay so we will see. Theres going to be a lot of job chasing coming up so I may not have much to choose from. Anyway, time for a cuppa in the garden.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Get yourself an HGV license, you can have a stress free life of eating Yorkies and driving

[KungFooBob]

Get yourself an HGV license, you can have a stress free life of eating Yorkies and driving

..and murdering prostitutes.

[Skub]

If you was in this position, what would you do next.??? Hoping you good folks might have some sterling ideas.

You seem to have a positive attitude,so since god loves a trier,you'll find something.

I jacked in my trade when I was 38 and made a few quid spannering bikes and working part time for a well known diy outfit.

One thing to watch,if you are the principal earner for your family,is paying into a pension. I don't have any pension worth talking about and I don't qualify for state funds until I'm 66. It's not a big issue for me,but for most it must be a consideration.

Get yourself an HGV license, you can have a stress free life of eating Yorkies and driving

Plus picking up and disposing of 'Ladies of the night'. Top perk.

shit...beaten at the internetz by KFB.

[Bigjawa]

Get yourself an HGV license, you can have a stress free life of eating Yorkies and driving

Don't.

I have one but I get better money driving buses, if you're only through your test, all you will get is agency work that pays barely above minimum wage. Most likely it'll be multi drop shit that will see you clear about 300 a week.

People talk about a driver shortage, there isn't one, just that a lot of cat C and C+E drivers have quit to drive the Tesco vans for better money and getting to sleep in your own bed at night.

[flicker]

Get yourself an HGV license, you can have a stress free life of eating Yorkies and driving

..and murdering prostitutes.

Everyone needs a hobby, good exercise too

[rodbargee]

Redundancy sucks but its not the end of the world, especially in todays weird times. I was made redundant 11 years ago now, after having worked for the same firm for 34 years! 450 of us found ourselves on the non existent job market in 2009. So I went freelance initially as a sole trader then later as a ltd company when the HMRC moved the goalposts which they are still trying to hide at the moment. Works non existant at the moment as Nothing has been shot recently so no post production sound required yet, but it will start again eventually. I too have had a look into a possible HGV licence, its not a cheap option but the chap who's school it is says there is plenty of work about for the right candidates they seem to like 50-60 year olds with lots of driving experience, hopefully not too murdery! teaching's another area that seem to be crying out for retrained people from industry.... That according to every teacher Ive ever met is hard work too. good luck! The outside IR35 ltd company is no picnic at the moment so caution on choosing a personal services LTD contractor type business.

[melons]

my opinion for what it's worth (sorry) is that at you're age you're going to find the employment market loaded against you unless you have some very 'in demand' skills, add the current & foreseeable economic climate isn't to your advantage either. Most, if not all of the sweet easy jobs suggested by others just won't exist, logistics being a possible exception, you can make a reasonable income doing multi-drop (without the need for a Class1 licence) with some Companies but it's long hours and physically exhausting (Amazon are one of the better employers), but from what I've heard a lot of Supermarkets pay less and limit your hours/earning potential.

If you're getting a good settlement (+2yrs Salary), you can afford to take some time off and 'find yourself', but if you're getting statutory you need to start searching/training now as if you end up claiming JSA you'll lose all control and find yourself being forced into the worst possible employment just so they can get you off their books.

I'm not taking the p***, I found myself in your situation during the last recession and started the journey with equal panache. For me it was a rather Kafkaesque journey but as a positive, If it wasn't for that redundancy & chance for self examination I would never have been as happy as I am now doing a job (I'd previously never heard of) that I love.

Be brave & get busy

[millemille]

Railway is a good place to be, rolling stock maintenance can be a good number and they take a lot of contract staff so you can keep your flexibility....

I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong. I'm 28 years in the railway industry, in rolling stock manufacture/maintenance/operation and I'm now the Engineering Director of a tier 1 safety system and services supplier.

The railway industry is on its arse and will be for a good couple of years at least. All of the franchises have been taken from the operators and all are now operating under Emergency Management Agreements (EMA's) - concessionary management contracts - where the government is paying a flat fee for the operators to run the railway and the treasury is picking up the tab for all the operating costs. This fee is around 2% of turnover - which was the average gross profit margin of a TOC before covid.

Right now the operators are running about 85% of the trains they were running pre-covid, so nigh on normal operating costs, but with only 10% of the passengers, and hence income. The government is funding the shortfall to the tune of millions of pounds per day. This is why Boris is urging people to get back to work, against the advice of SAGE, because the treasury doesn't have the collateral to keep up this level of subsidy indefinitely.

The EMA's were for a 6 month period initially and are due to be reviewed in September. The railway industry has no frame of reference as how long it will take for passenger numbers to recover and to what level they will recover to, the closest we have is post Hatfield and 2009. It took 2 years for numbers to recover in both cases but no-one knows how much impact home working is going to have on passenger numbers.

Given that the Williams Review has been open in its position that franchises should go and be replaced with concessions it seems unlikely that the EMA's are going anywhere for the foreseeable. If the government did return the franchises every single operator would hand the keys back and chaos would ensue.

With the government funding keeping the railway running we can expect a significantly reduced timetable with probably a 1/4 of the services that there are now to drive the cost out. That means fewer drivers, fewer operational people, fewer maintenance staff and so on...

We are working with several industry groups on nation wide rolling stock engineering projects that are seeking central government funding on the basis of the jobs they will secure and create in the wider economy to satisfy Boris's desire for "shovel ready" projects.

But the rail industry is not a good place to be right now and definitely not the industry to be joining.

[millemille]

With apologies to the OP for taking his thread of track, and for making it depressing reading as well.

The sums of money the government are spending behind the scenes, so to speak, are eye watering.

I've a friend who's a sales director at an IT product and services supplier to central government, they're a framework supplier (pre-approved and vetted to tender, for which they pay 1% of any tender won back to the government for the privilege) and were asked to tender on a project, which has to be in place and working by early September, to have 275,000 laptops/tablets/smartphones available for overnight delivery when ordered by teachers through an online portal - which the supplier has to create - for kids from disadvantaged/underprivileged homes in the event of local or national lockdown closing the school so that the kids can access online lessons and resources.

The contract is worth an estimated £60 million.

And it's the second one of this kind the government has let since March....

That's got to be paid for somewhere along the line.

The one bit of good news I have heard is that all government department procurement teams are encouraging all of their framework suppliers to form consortium's with UK owned and based SME's (Small Medium Enterprises) and that tenders with UK SME's involved will be evaluated favourably. Government don't want the money going overseas to some faceless homogenised services provider and instead wants the money going into the UK economy, retaining or creating jobs etc.

[Horse]

Redundancy sucks but its not the end of the world, especially in todays weird times. I was made redundant 11 years ago now, after having worked for the same firm for 34 years! 450 of us found ourselves on the non existent job market in 2009.

To give more positivity, another personal 'it could be ok' story from me.

I was made redundant in 2008 after 25 years with the same company. This was just at the point that the financial world was about to leave on an over-successful cliff edge hunting expedition.

I received the government bare minimum payment, along with [contractual notice period] three months 'gardening leave'.

I didn't know what I wanted to do - just knew I didn't want to do what I'd been doing for a couple of years (because I was rubbish at it and bored) and didn't want to return to what I'd been doing for almost 30 years before (because the world was moving on and the same job barely existed).

I took the decision that I would do something - even if shelf-stacking in Tescos. My hobby was rider training. I had already started to set up as sole trader (due to changes in training provision meaning that the previous model was no longer available). I looked at various other things that I might be able to do quickly with no retraining.

Luckily, Filly was still working, so no massive and immediate worries about food on table or roof over head.

The company funded a [actually, quite useful] two hour 'finding a job' session, writing CVs etc. A couple of points from that:
- Old-style CVs (school, qualifications, employment, etc.) have been largely replaced by 'sales' format. Tell them what you can do for them!
- Have a succinct statement ready, so if anyone asks "What do you do?" you can tell them straight away. The guy running the session said that the quickest he'd known with that was two hours (from redundancy to conversation in pub) and two days (from conversation "Oh, I need someone to do that") to starting work.

Use your friends and contacts.

I struck lucky. I emailed everyone in my address book to say "I won't be here any longer" and got a reply which, two days later led to a couple of job specs dropping into the inbox. That led to a weird interview - I thought that I'd pissed off both people and that one of them really didn't like me! - and, after some delays, three months contract work then onto full-time staff. I'm still there.

So:
- Do you know what you want to do?
- Do you have a 'portfolio' of skills (people management, organisational, from hobbies, etc.) rather than a job title?
- Get your one line explanation of 'you' ready - the proverbial 'elevator pitch'
- Use your contacts, friends, social networks, etc.
- Check out all of the job finder sites, is Linkedin appropriate for you?

But I'll end on a downbeat, but realistic, note. It is a horrible, worrying time. I was working for about 3 years after before I started t ofeel at all secure.

No I won't, I'll end with this:

During the month I wasn't working, I installed extra loft insulation, so gradually had a more pleasant house and saved money. The redundancy money paid for an old larder to be converted into a downstairs loo - so I am reminded of my old employer every time I sit there for a

[MingtheMerciless]

Railway is a good place to be, rolling stock maintenance can be a good number and they take a lot of contract staff so you can keep your flexibility....

Right now the operators are running about 85% of the trains they were running pre-covid, so nigh on normal operating costs, but with only 10% of the passengers, and hence income. The government is funding the shortfall to the tune of millions of pounds per day. This is why Boris is urging people to get back to work, against the advice of SAGE, because the treasury doesn't have the collateral to keep up this level of subsidy indefinitely.

I work in Brighton for NR and can confirm that the mainline trains are virtually empty in and out of Brighton at peak time (they should be almost or standing room only). Surprisingly the west coast trains are more busy than the main line stock. Week night engineering work seems to be heavily curtailed (normally 6-8 possessions on our area at night but its down to 3 or 4). There are also overtime bans in place in some departments.

Nothings been said officially but I can see a lot of our projects/upgrades being postponed/cancelled if the service is going to be long term thinned out based on what millemille has said.

[v8-powered]

Railway is a good place to be, rolling stock maintenance can be a good number and they take a lot of contract staff so you can keep your flexibility....

I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong. I'm 28 years in the railway industry, in rolling stock manufacture/maintenance/operation and I'm now the Engineering Director of a tier 1 safety system and services supplier.

The railway industry is on its arse and will be for a good couple of years at least. All of the franchises have been taken from the operators and all are now operating under Emergency Management Agreements (EMA's) - concessionary management contracts - where the government is paying a flat fee for the operators to run the railway and the treasury is picking up the tab for all the operating costs. This fee is around 2% of turnover - which was the average gross profit margin of a TOC before covid.

Right now the operators are running about 85% of the trains they were running pre-covid, so nigh on normal operating costs, but with only 10% of the passengers, and hence income. The government is funding the shortfall to the tune of millions of pounds per day. This is why Boris is urging people to get back to work, against the advice of SAGE, because the treasury doesn't have the collateral to keep up this level of subsidy indefinitely.

The EMA's were for a 6 month period initially and are due to be reviewed in September. The railway industry has no frame of reference as how long it will take for passenger numbers to recover and to what level they will recover to, the closest we have is post Hatfield and 2009. It took 2 years for numbers to recover in both cases but no-one knows how much impact home working is going to have on passenger numbers.

Given that the Williams Review has been open in its position that franchises should go and be replaced with concessions it seems unlikely that the EMA's are going anywhere for the foreseeable. If the government did return the franchises every single operator would hand the keys back and chaos would ensue.

With the government funding keeping the railway running we can expect a significantly reduced timetable with probably a 1/4 of the services that there are now to drive the cost out. That means fewer drivers, fewer operational people, fewer maintenance staff and so on...

We are working with several industry groups on nation wide rolling stock engineering projects that are seeking central government funding on the basis of the jobs they will secure and create in the wider economy to satisfy Boris's desire for "shovel ready" projects.

But the rail industry is not a good place to be right now and definitely not the industry to be joining.

I'm Railway too - joined in 1987, we have spoken before and have mutual friends in the industry.

What I was suggesting is something along the lines of a rolling stock maintainer role, plenty of roles in that side of the business. I work in the consulting game, so yes things are changing there, but there is still a massive push for the current projects to be completed. I'm currently involved in the new fleet introduction for Greater Anglia/Rock Rail and we've pushed ahead through the whole COVID headache.

Yes, many projects will be caped but the ongoing maintenance will be unaffected - the industry is still crucifying out for ex-forces techs, along with those with suitable automotive/heavy engineering backgrounds.