A Beginning
Tuesday, May 1, saw the birth of Carestream Health Inc.
What was formerly the Health Group of Eastman Kodak Company was bought by a Canadian investment firm, Onex, and is now Carestream Health.
For the employees, like me, things are good. We're doing the same job, for the same pay and roughly the same benefits. We're working in the same buildings (Carestream has bought what were Building 20 at Kodak Office, and Building 214 at Kodak Park).
We have high hopes that they will fund our R&D adequately and won't keep throwing austerity campaigns at us like Kodak did. We hope to continue making money as well as we did for Kodak, which should make Onex happy.
Changes for me? Well, there are several.
Carestream's cafeteria-of-benefits plan does NOT include the "vacation buy" option that Kodak offered. I had signed up to have a week's pay deducted over the course of the year in turn for another week of vacation time. Now, I'm getting the money I put into ot back, but am losing that week of vacation. Since I burned a lot of my vacation around our trip to Africa back in February (because I knew I had plenty of vacation), things are going to be a little tight the rest of the year.
I was retirement-eligible at Kodak (age+years of service > 75) so I'll be taking my retirement benefit as a lump-sum and investing it in hopes that I'll have enough to retire eventually. (The fall of Kodak stock from the 60's to the 20's was not a happy one for my 401K). Carestream has a 401K, with an employer match, so I'll be able to keep saving there.
On the upside, we're not hobbled by Kodak restrictions any more. We're no longer under their VOC emissions agreement, so we can have our own paint shop once again. We are no longer under their vending-machine agreement, so our department coffee club is resuming operation (cheaper AND better than machine coffee, plus tea, chocolate, oatmeal, Pop-tarts, and occasional parties thrown with the profits). An, most of all as I said before, we're not going to be hit with austerity campaigns every time Kodak's consumer phot sales hit a bump.
Oh, and since, we get to keep our seniority, in July I'll be a thirty-year employee of a two-month-old company!
Life, on the whole, is good.
What was formerly the Health Group of Eastman Kodak Company was bought by a Canadian investment firm, Onex, and is now Carestream Health.
For the employees, like me, things are good. We're doing the same job, for the same pay and roughly the same benefits. We're working in the same buildings (Carestream has bought what were Building 20 at Kodak Office, and Building 214 at Kodak Park).
We have high hopes that they will fund our R&D adequately and won't keep throwing austerity campaigns at us like Kodak did. We hope to continue making money as well as we did for Kodak, which should make Onex happy.
Changes for me? Well, there are several.
Carestream's cafeteria-of-benefits plan does NOT include the "vacation buy" option that Kodak offered. I had signed up to have a week's pay deducted over the course of the year in turn for another week of vacation time. Now, I'm getting the money I put into ot back, but am losing that week of vacation. Since I burned a lot of my vacation around our trip to Africa back in February (because I knew I had plenty of vacation), things are going to be a little tight the rest of the year.
I was retirement-eligible at Kodak (age+years of service > 75) so I'll be taking my retirement benefit as a lump-sum and investing it in hopes that I'll have enough to retire eventually. (The fall of Kodak stock from the 60's to the 20's was not a happy one for my 401K). Carestream has a 401K, with an employer match, so I'll be able to keep saving there.
On the upside, we're not hobbled by Kodak restrictions any more. We're no longer under their VOC emissions agreement, so we can have our own paint shop once again. We are no longer under their vending-machine agreement, so our department coffee club is resuming operation (cheaper AND better than machine coffee, plus tea, chocolate, oatmeal, Pop-tarts, and occasional parties thrown with the profits). An, most of all as I said before, we're not going to be hit with austerity campaigns every time Kodak's consumer phot sales hit a bump.
Oh, and since, we get to keep our seniority, in July I'll be a thirty-year employee of a two-month-old company!
Life, on the whole, is good.