Dear Minonis,
A "golden handshake" is a high amount of severance pay given to almost bribe the person not to make trouble about the unfair severance. When your husband was paid three times more than his salary it was different, I believe, from a "golden handshake" because your system is different. Some "golden handshakes" are extremely high amounts. The company our son's wife was with had no good reason for the severance and she held a high position, so they paid her off handsomely. It could very well be that the person who will take her place will be paid much less than she was. That could well be the reason for the severance.
You see although that vacation was due to her, it has become dangerous in many companies to take your vacations. Some companies want you to be "married to the company" and not to your family, your marriage, or your health. And in some companies the plotting starts when you aren't there to watch out for yourself. It is a very "dog eat dog" world, don't you think?
Companies here don't have a redundancy list, or even use that word. The people aren't necessarily redundant at all. Often, the word used is "down-sizing". Down-sizing is the euphemism used to let well-functioning and useful people go, in order to make people who are still with the company work harder and longer. In this way the company saves money by overworking those who are left. This has become quite a problem, as overworked people are burning out, and there are well trained professionals in their "best years" who have decided that working in "the rat race" is just not worth it any more. These simplify their livesj, often move to smaller places, and find independent ways to make their livings using other talents that may just have been hobbies before.
In the cases of my son and his wife, I think the severance happened because of office politics and "back-stabbing." A person never knows unless they "keep their ear to the ground" through friends who remain with the company. Then they will learn who took the job after they left, and they'll understand the motives involved. If a person does too much just looking backward and continuing to suffer over it, rather than looking ahead and finding their future, it is a handicap. Personally, I think the best thing to do is to "wash your hands of the whole situation", keep a "stiff upper lip", and a cheerful and confident spirit, and go ahead from where you are.
Once people used to work for companies for a long time, oftena for their whole lives. There was trust then, between employer and employee. Now with so much downsizing, employees know that they are not seen as partners, but rather as items to be plugged in here and there, as though they were hardly human. You might say, as "cogs in a wheel." Therefore, just as employers can suddenly let long term employees go without good reason, so employees no longer feel any loyalty to the companies for which they work. Some companies are beginning now to realize what they have lost in their greed for "the bottom line," and for constantly "feathering their own nests".
There is now a growing condition here where jobs are "shipped overseas". With the internet and instant communications, much work can be performed by low paid people in far away countries where wages are very low, such as India. In fact, some companies with overseas employees in "call centres" have even taught those employees to speak with the same accent as the people they call in the United States, so people called won't know they are being phoned about local business, by someone in a far away land and won't resent the fact, due to local job losses. This shipping of jobs overseas is a growing concern, because lost jobs here are rising in quality and are lost to North Americans. This can cause local hardship and affect national economies. For instance, a lot of advanced computer programming and design is beginning to be shipped overseas in order to save healthy North American salaries, and to pay the very low ones still acceptable in such countries.
I'm glad that your husband was able to make good use of the time and money he received, and that things are stable for you now.
I thought this story would introduce friends here to some new phrases, and so I've made my reply to your question about the meaning of a "golden handshake" into a root article.
Best wishes, Mary
