Update on Status of Voluntary Permanent Layoffs – March 8, 2012

2012-03-08T00:00:00

On February 27, 2012, every SPIN employee who has been employed with SPIN for five years or more received an email letter from Donna Hyde informing them of the opportunity to request a voluntary permanent layoff subject to SPIN’s approval.  The reason we took this action is because we continue to need to reduce our costs and are attempting to do that in the most beneficial and person-first manner. We also promised to keep you informed of how this process is going. This update seeks to do just that.

The interest in this opportunity was beyond what we had anticipated.  As of today’s date at 2:30 pm, six employees in management and 13 employees in the union have applied for voluntary permanent layoff. 

Because we have the flexibility to move the job responsibilities of our managers to other managers which will not directly impact people in service, we have approved all requests by management for a voluntary layoff.  All of these will result in a decrease in costs which will help SPIN’s budget.

Approval for employees within the union requires a very cautious review to assure we can proceed without negatively impacting service recipient’s services.  The review also needs to assure that approving the request will help us achieve our stated purpose of reducing costs. 

For these reasons, as of today’s date, no employees in the union have been approved for their request for a voluntary permanent layoff. 

At this time, we expect that we will only be in a position to approve a few employees who are in the union for the voluntary layoff.  In most cases the employee requesting the voluntary layoff would have to be replaced by a new employee in order to assure adequate coverage for the people we support.  This fact means that in most cases, there would be no real cost savings to SPIN, which was our stated purpose at the outset and there would be a reduction in quality at the same time since we would be replacing an experienced person with an inexperienced person.

Every employee in the union who applies will be notified on March 14 by 5 pm as to whether or not they have been approved. Until then, please know that all requests are under consideration by leadership.

Please contact Donna Hyde, your Corporate Officer, or Judy Dotzman or myself if you have further questions.

Kathy Brown McHale
President  & CEO