Voluntary Separation Scheme...

Well, woke up to an unpleasant news of being targeted as one of the employees "recommended" for voluntary separation scheme (VSS). After working for about 6 years at this steel mill, a local arm of a famous Australian coating line located in Kapar, the business went from bad to worse within 2 quarters after riding high for a period of 6 months before that. Plagued with tens of thousands tons of steel coils, purchased at a higher market price before the commodities and global economic meltdown, the business is now trying to cope with losses in millions (not including USD exchange rate losses) by initiating a first wave of costs cut back by offering VSS to its permanent employees across the board. Well, not across the board anyway.

To my surprise, irregardless of what the official communication was, actually there are a bunch of employees being "tagged" for "highly recommended" to take VSS. I am one of them. The reason behind this is quite murky. That's the problem. VSS is voluntary, not via indirect duress of being asked to go for a one on one meeting with a sales manager for a "chat". I think that took the dignity out of the whole process. I did not debate in length the reason for being asked so but the situation is this, if the VSS is not fully subscribe to its desired number of employees, and meet the so-called "forecast" to sustain the business, since they are scaling back its fiscal budget, thus creating redundancy, the second wave to be considered would be retrenchment. And in between that, those "tagged" would be indirectly put into "cold storage". Better to take VSS right? However, it is a highly risky move for me as I have a small family to raise, as well as with the economic situation right now, would I be able to bounce back into the labour market in time?

Ah well, que sera sera, I have had enough of all the shenanigans anyway. Hope to roll with the punches now...