Burdensome?

The Federal Government sent me a certified letter last week. I found out from a yellowing slip of paper that was slid under my door. Sender: FDIC.

I picked up the letter from the post office on Saturday. Basically the FDIC spent over $5.00 to let me know that my “employment contract” was seen as too burdensome to honor.

For those of you unfamiliar with banking – often times there is something called a “change in control” for those at a certain level. In an industry that is notorious for mergers and acquisitions or my favorite term “consolidation in the industry.” Change in control agreements were leveraged as talent attraction and retention tools. At my level, it guaranteed that if my role was changed substantially through a merger or acquisition that I’d be given 1.5x my annual salary as severance.

Sounds generous, I am sure. And it is. Particularly as executive compensation is under fire. Damn those folks at AIG that flaunted their bonuses as they were receiving tax dollars to fund their turnaround. If there wasn’t a swine virus and two wars and the economy to worry about, I might actually try to petition President Obama to look into this. My letter would read something like this:

“Dear President Obama:

I am writing to you today with a slim hope that you might look into a decision made by the FDIC to not honor an employment contract for me and many of my former colleagues at Washington Mutual Bank.

Last week I received, through certified mail, a memo that the FDIC sees honoring the employment contract to be “burdensome.” Large amounts of tax dollars are being spent to bail out large financial institutions to get the country & world to a more stable economic footing. And I understand that (with the exception of them using the funds for lobbyists). I also hope that you understand that the employment contract I had with Washington Mutual, if honored, would put me and my family on more stable ground as well.

I worked for the company for over seven years. I put my heart and soul into my work. I sacrificed vacations, family time and some times it seems my health to do good things and to work on things that I felt would make a difference. I wasn’t involved in making loans – I had a HQ job and focused on human resources programs such as developing talent, assessing employee engagement, assessing performance and helping leaders with change management.

Prior to the take over and the subsequent selling of WaMu to Chase, I believed our Senior Leaders when they said that we could make it through the tough time and come out on the other end stronger. I didn’t stay because I had a “change in control” agreement. I stayed because I cared about what I was doing and about the people I was doing it for. I said no to other work for other companies. I said yes to working through a difficult period and hoping to rebuild things once we turned the corner as a business.

I wasn’t a big wig at the company. But the security blanket, along with all of my now worthless shares, evaporated with the take over. And, with a 10% unemployment rate in the state of Washington, it is likely that I won’t be able to make up that lost income for years to come. Am I not your constituency? I live in the blue state part of this very divided state. I celebrated your "win" with tears and bubbly. I am looking forward to seeing you do good things. I voted for you, dude.

All that I am asking is for a fair review of the decision. As a strong supporter of you and your administration, I thank you in advance for your consideration."

What's the address to the White House?