Pros
I retired a couple of years ago as the retirement benefit was about to change as a result of a Government mandate due to underfunding. I've heard that the retirement plan is now adequately funded, however, the retirement plan benefit has been reduced and closed to new employees for quite some time now. The C4 Systems division was best when it was GTE Government Systems on almost all points, but it was changing even then in the later years, Dropping the employee stock plan was a major blow to GTE benefits. Are these Pros? Okay here's one, after working with people closely they are truly great people that want to service the customer in the best way possible. More companies should have people like this. It is unfortunate that some of the Government representative don't really see it that way. They seem to view Government contractors as only self/company-serving. GD is pushing women in management agenda like many Government contractors... this is also a Con as much more qualified employees are often overlooked in the process and the work effort suffers. All the Pros this company once had is changing for the worse every day.
Cons
- Currently, the erosion of benefits occurs several times a year. The most egregious was the elimination of sick time in exchange for adding extra Paid Time Off (PTO), i.e. vacation, then reducing yearly accrual of PTO hours only a couple of years later, with a net result of no sick time unless you want to spend your vacation time in a sick bed. No sick time has resulted in many employees coming to work sick, thus making others sick. Since there is no unique charge number for sick time, the company has no idea how often its employees are sick (a lost metric). I did see where the old unlimited sick time policy was abused. - Small amounts of layoffs occur often, like management is trying to stay below the radar of the media while leaving the remaining employees with a feeling of 'who's next...maybe me'. Nobody talks about the work anymore, just the erosion of benefits and low morale.