White Bear Lake,
I’m reaching out because it’s important for you to know that you’re not alone. Nearly everyone I’ve spoken with has expressed the same frustration, the same uncertainty. It’s easy to feel powerless, but we’re not powerless when we stand together.
This year has brought a long and unexplained hiring freeze and jarring, unsympathetic layoffs. How insulting to see "Strong third-quarter enterprise results" on ClimateZone. Layoffs that happened suddenly and abruptly for people we’ve worked with and cared about for years. Layoffs that we still don’t fully understand the scope of. Layoffs that couldn’t even be acknowledged publicly, out of fear of stock market backlash. The severance offered was minimal. The knowledge and experience lost were immense. These actions treated dedicated employees as if they were disposable.
We are not disposable.
Now, we’re told to return to the office four days a week. It's almost as if disdain is the point. Return to office mandates don’t increase productivity, sometimes the opposite. It is entirely about distrust executives have with their workers and a desire to make use of overly expensive commercial land holdings in a post-pandemic world. The message seems clear: the company knows the job market is weak and is using that to cut back on flexibility and benefits, maybe even hoping some of us will quit on our own and saving them the cost of severance.
It’s unacceptable.
Let’s look at the bigger picture. Our CEO earned roughly $28 million in various compensations in 2024, which is around 426 times the company’s median salary. Do you think he’s worried about paying rent, feeding his family, or finding his next job, like many of the people who were laid off?
Meanwhile, we face the consequences of decisions made at the top. Decisions that have cost people their livelihoods and made the rest of our jobs even harder. The burden isn’t shared. Executives aren’t taking pay cuts. They aren’t the ones living with the fallout.
It’s clear where we stand in their priorities.
But we don’t have to accept this. White Bear Lake is essential to Trane Technologies, and our voices matter. I urge everyone reading this to speak up. Let leadership hear what we think and feel.
They rely on us. We are not disposable. Remember that. Don't work in fear. Work in pride.