Readers Report

EARLY RETIREMENT: A GOOD WAY TO LOSE THE BEST WORKERS?

Corporate management has obviously forgotten the lesson we learned in the days before milk was homogenized: If you pour from the top, the cream comes out first.

IBM and the other companies mentioned in "Take the money and run--or take your chances" (Top of the News, Aug. 16) should realize that enhanced "retirement" packages are most attractive to the best employees. These are the people who can most easily find new employment.

As the cream of the work force leaves, the company is then left with skim milk. Its employee pool will no longer be fat, but neither will it have the quality of the people who walked out the door.

Richard D. Hardy

Vashon, Wash.