What happened was a series of CEOs and executives (including a certain former head of their "GES" I.T. division) who had no vision other than maximising their own bonuses in quarterly chunks. Unfortunately, there were rewarded for short-term thinking while pretending to "maximize" shareholder value. They trashed R&D (not immediately profitable after all), they sold all the manufacturing facilities (nice dividend boost while emasculating the deep connection between design and manufacturing Nortel used to have), they reorganized again and again in order to make shareholders think something was happening when in fact they were just draining the company dry. They did everything to maximize short-term gains - and thus their bonuses - while completely ignoring and in fact deliberately harming long term health of the company.

This is the result of those policies.

In my opinion, those executives - starting with Stern onwards - should be hunted down and jailed. Since a corporation is considered an "individual" in law, what they did was equivalent to torture and murder of that corporate individual.

I guess from what I read you have personal knowledge here - I really feel for you guys, honest!

I have great respect for Nortel (& in fact my son has been trained in Nortel technologies) so it is very sad to see so many good people dumped.

Personally I work for another large IT company, and whilst we will never be the hottest babe of the stock market & not immune to cut backs (yes, I have lost valued colleagues recently) we will always be around - OK so we don't hire the latest new guru to lead us, it's always someone who has come up through our organisation (for good or bad) - it is usually one of "us" . . . so come what may we will always pull together to deliver

good luck & God bless to anyone who is looking for a new job right now

This is so typical of engineering-centric companies in the UK. Shed R&D, fail to develop new products, revenues declines, then shed manufacturing...and end up with the square-root of fuck all.

Design and manufacturing earns real money and pays the bills. Sadly, no bean-counter ever understands this. 9000 new jobs at McDonalds does not replace 2000 quality jobs at somewhere like Nortel - nor do they stimulate the local area economy.

Aboat* Nortel, it's Canadian, eh. Nortel has historically paid quite well, so I'll give you that that does stimulate economy a bit, but it hasn't made much profit since 2000. Only profitable companies stimulate the economy long term. Nortel was also chosen by the Canadian government as a national champion corporation, we know how well that worked for British Leyland.

* how do you tell the difference between a Canadian and US accent? it's how they pronounce 'out'. Usually the tell-tale is 'about' pronounced as 'aboat'. And don't forget the 'eh'.

It is only the weak employment laws in Canada and the US that ALLOWS them to get away without paying severance. What a wonderful thing to do to your long serving employee's.. show them the door with nothing as a cushion.. heartless is what I say it is.

Have you see what the UK Statutory minimum payments are?

Worst case, it's 0.5 weeks pay per year capped at 20 years and £350 per week salary

Best case, it's 1.5 weeks pay per year, capped at 20 years and £350 per week salary

Best case example, someone aged 61,20 years service on £40k gets £10,500 tax free

Medium case example, someone aged 42, 20 years service on £40k gets £7175 tax free

Worst case example, someone aged 22, 5 years service on £40k gets £875 tax free

Data from UK Gov site: http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/employment/employment-legislation/employment-guidance/page33683.html

I'm amazed the government can discriminate based on age - however, it's better than Zero offered to Nortel employees in Canda but nowhere near as much as banks and even companies such as Dell are offering (c. 4 weeks pay per year of service, no salary cap).

Nortel are in administration - that their excuse.