Just another heartless corporation? … Or a simple misunderstanding?
National Semiconductor last month basked in the glow of positive media attention after announcing it was handing a shiny new video iPod valued at $300 to each of its 8,500 employees. The stated intent was both to foster internal communication and to reward employees for a record fiscal-year performance.
Then 35 workers at National Semiconductor’s plant in Arlington, Tex., were given their walking papers … and the company asked the laid-off employees to return their video iPods.
Now the company is taking the kind of public relations pounding that only the Internet can administer.
National Semiconductor insists it never called the iPods gifts, although a casual reading of the company’s press release might leave one with the wrong impression and press accounts of the event certainly did so.
At the going rate, those 8,500 iPods cost the company about $2.5 million, with the 35 from the laid-off workers accounting for only $10,500 of the total.
The value of all this negative pub? … You know the punch line.
