Integrator 2e2 axes 319 UK staff, halts pay cheques - insiders

Very sad for those on the floor.

I'd been a customer of 2e2 for a number of years and prior to that Kingswell, a good company and small enough to feel that you, the customer, was important. Then Kingswell and Trisys had the misfortune of being gobbled up by this greedy bunch. What is it with these companies - they are nothing more than acquistion shells hell bent of stripping them back to the bare bones and off-shoring wherever they can just to sell off the business at a vast profit once they've found a likely punter. I did read somewhere that the 2e2 were looking to sell for around $400m+ sometime not so long ago but wanted to hold out for more - well they had their a$$es well and truly smoked by this but unfortunately (again) it's the regular employees that are going to suffer once again through the greed and incompetence of the board and their so called "advisors". What a bunch of shysters - they should hang their heads in shame, trouble is they'll pop up again somewhere and stick their snouts in somebody elses trough. These guys can just walk away with nothing more than a slapped wrist - the greedy scum, but the employees stand to lose so much more. Then there's the fallout that will no doubt bring down smaller suppliers who may not be able to weather this. My thoughts are with all of those goods guys and gals at 2e2 and hope you can find a way out of this almighty mess - I'm so very sorry.

National Security Risk

So... Are all of the employees that are still based on Government sites considered a security risk? - How would they fare with pinching laptops and servers etc...?

Surely a disgruntled employee in a government position working in national security departments of inteligence is a security risk? Have they been taken off site yet?

Maybe they will start selling national secrets?

hiring a lot of staff until just recently....

2E2 have been on a hiring spree recently. They have "poached" a lot of staff from my employer and several of my workmates have gone to work for 2E2 in Reading. I was approached by them directly about a month ago. Interview was all set up, then I got a phone call from their recruitment guy telling me that all recruitment had been suspended. Now I know why.....

I find it very frustrating that we have such as system like this in this UK where directors of these failed companies do so well out of a failure whilst the normal employee who has a mortgage, family to feed etc is left with nothing. These so called Directors should be banned from running Companies anywhere in Europe for a set period of time and certainly should be under obligation to not receive any pay of any sort whilst others are not. Perhaps I am just dreaming. But if we pull out of Europe even more workers rights are likely to get thrown out as well I expect!

Fantastic, just like the Soviet Union was like in 1992. Withholding pay, well they should watch out, "they pretend to pay" "we pretend to work". Quid pro quo. Respect works both ways, and workers in IT often know many others in their field.

Same applies to outsourcers who pay late always. Nothing to do with interest on the payroll money (not theirs) in their bank account then, oh nooo...... of course it forces the employees into debt, often at high interest rates.

Question - If I do not get my January time sheet signed off can 2e2 still bill my client for the hours I worked?

If I'm not getting paid for my efforts in January why should they? Especially if any notice/ redundancy payments I eventually receive come from a tax payer funded scheme.

Some hope

My experience is that if the administrators are any good they will be able to flog the business for an amount based on a discounted value of customer service agreements in place, in 2e2s case this should be a substantial amount. So some of the staff will need to be retained; most likely these will be in technical delivery and related administration.

My advice 'don;t be passive' you're debtors you have a rights including the right to be consulted; GET YOUR VOICE HEARD, militate and make sure you're listened to. If they want you to work on get agreement to be paid by the administrator - if they won;t stop working call in sick. Believe it or not administrators NEED you.

A glimmer of hope of some compensation is that staff rank high in the payouts Some will be pleased to hear the Directors will be pretty much last (see link below). This is of course cold comfort and nothing can compensate for the anguish and worry that staff and there families will be going through.

http://www.inbrief.co.uk/business-finance/order-of-priority-for-creditors.htm

Good luck and don;t go quietly

One of the 320

There are a lot of unhappy people this morning, I’m one of them and there are another 319 right behind me.

As further details have emerged it seems as though in some areas there has been a selection process going on for redundancy where people in the same role as those told to leave with no pay are being retained. Such selection processes are normally public and subject to consultation periods rather than being purely at management discretion.

I’d suggest this and the no pay and no redundancy payment approach is a gambit by 2e2 management and auditors to get staff off the books as quickly and as cheaply as possible in the hope the staff don’t understand or bother to enforce the fact they have certain employment rights.

Obviously most people came away from yesterdays meetings and conference calls in a state of shock, panic and anger and the first thing they did was update their CV and check out their finances – whilst everyone needs to move forward as quickly as possible we also need to recognise our rights and these are being abused by our (ex) employer.

Of course the board, the senior management team and administrators are all scrambling around trying desperately to find a buyer to rescue what is left of the company. The irony here is the board are sitting pretty on their cash piles and won’t be worrying about mortgage repayments or feeding the kids and the nepotistic senior management team will be paid off by the new suitor.

Any potential suitor must think long and hard about what they’d be buying – the remaining staff will be one step behind the 320 of us in preparing the CVs and customers will be busy invoking contract exit clauses.

In terms of my next suitor, or employer, I’ll be looking carefully to see if they have been too acquisitive just to continually restructure finances to hide debt. This coupled with the “eclectic” accounting practices enabled by Venture Capitalist and Private Equity ownership are the underlying tools that enabled the board to mismanage the company into its current sorry state.

I’d like to wish all of my ex-2e2 colleagues the best of luck for the future and take the opportunity to say it’s been a pleasure working with you all. When I joined I asked, “what does 2e2 stand for?” and was told “to escape to” – well lets take this as the opportunity to think we’ve “escaped from” a debt laden mismanaged business.