Michael1942's Blog

recent (June 2010) news article reported that 200 employees of a local non profit were “terminated”. This was explained by a member of management as normal procedure when in fact it was not normal procedure. Normal procedure was to “lay off ” workers until the fall session and recall them. This new action was in response to a recently enacted portion of the National Health Care bill, which requires employers to pay for part of the “laid” off workers COBRA. This would have been an 18 to 20 thousand dollar expense. It was also stated that most of those terminated would be called back in the fall session however after that mass termination, 8 employees were summarily “sacked” some with 18 years of quality service. Thereafter some 22 more positions and employees were eliminated when the terminated and still employed decided to unionize. This last mass termination fueled by the assault of management against unionization allowed the employees to use the Non profit’s mission statement as the tool to unionize.