My company is sending mixed messages. We are down ~20% from last year. That is misleading becuase 2008 was our best year ever. We are still above 2007 profit.

Unfortunately, we have more employees then in 2007, and higher overhead. As a result, we have all been asked to use up vacation time, cut hours down to 32 per week if you are hourly, or take a pay cut is you are salaried and out of vacation time. There are 2 departments in the company that have been exempted from these cuts. I do not work for either of them, but with my background, I have been given permission to charge 32 hours/month of my time to one of those departments, allowing me to save vacation time and keep full pay. We do show signs of picking up and I am hoping my mid-summer, we will be back at full hours. But I think everyone is in agreement we would rather all give a little then see any of our co-workers loose their jobs completely.

Ralph works in automotive, and realistically, should have been laid off in the last round of cuts. But his boss feels that he is essential to the company's operation and fought to keep him on.

We are definately some of the lucky ones at this point.