Saturday, July 3, 2010
A Few Are Pulled From the Abyss
Three MARSD janitors who were fired recently with nearly 25 years of service and left to the wiles of outsourcing may be rehired under a sidebar deal between the school board and the union, according to The Independent. It's great news for three families but little solace for countless others cut loose to an impersonal hell.
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As a matter of course, it is not uncommon to see companies do one or more of several things when outsourcing full time employees with benefit plans.
ReplyDeleteRegular employees are transferred to the receiving company WITH pension payments and other benefits intact, and the receiving company continues the pension payments, or transitions the employee into their program. The outsourcing done by AT&T and Prudential comes to mind.
Older employees are sometimes offered the option to continue employment. Other times they transition to the new company with years in service and pension payments intact. Other times they are bridged to retirement without having to work further. In this instance, the company accords the employee benefits as of retirement age without having to pay them salaries until then.
In all cases, companies do what is seen as fundamentally fair to the former employees. While companies and organizations go through difficult economic times, most companies want to recognize the contributions of years of valued service, despite their need to meet a bottom line.
The fact that the District did not plan for this eventuality (as it may happen any given year) speaks to a lack of HR planning. The fact that the need to downsize one set of employees while blaming another set of employees is untoward.
One wonders if the District is not too small to accept the burdens it faces. Lacking the ability to negotiate effectively, politicizing the process in a public blame game, the inability to assess and negotiate effective outsourcing or other arrangements without being backed into a corner. These are the types of things that happen to small business that get "surprised" by real life.
Anyway Aberdeennjlife, yes, I do agree with the comment about the other custodians, yet I don't see what our compassion will do for them now.