Could lay offs be avoided?

So I am still fuming about the recent events surrounding Baldwin Filters. After talking with a handful of those employees laid off, there is no hope of those laid off ever returning to Baldwin. I don’t blame them. Why would you go back to work somewhere that just laid you off? You would have to start at the bottom of the totem pole all over again. Not worth it.

I do give Baldwin kudos when it comes to avoiding lay offs though. They have tried the past four months or so to avoid laying off anyone. Some employees of the Kearney Baldwin Filters experienced a lovely pay raise, only to have it be taken away about two weeks later. Many employees also had the opportunity to work overtime on the weekends for extra money. That was also taken away. Instead, employees were put ‘on call’ in case they were needed. Everyone could see that these were steps to avoid actually laying someone off.

I give them kudos, but as a wife of someone who just lost their job, I have the right to complain and fume. And complain and fume I will. I never thought my husband and I would attend an ‘unemployment’ meeting where we would learn how to receive our unemployment checks. I never thought it would be us.

It upset me to the core to talk with other employees who were also laid off. One was a single mother of two; another was a college student who was working at Baldwin to support himself; another was an older woman who had worked for Baldwin for over 30 years; another was a husband and a father of three; another had just bought a house and thanks to the lay off, he lost his brand new home. It broke my heart to hear those stories. These were good people and now their lives were upside down. I walked out of the unemployment meeting with tears behind my eyes.

Talking with my husband and others that were laid off we realized something. The lay offs had to rhyme or reason to them. They weren’t by seniority. They weren’t by the people who had gotten written up. We couldn’t find a pattern to those who were laid off. Apparently, my husband’s co-workers, who were on his shift, had confronted the boss after he escorted my husband out. They asked him why he was laying him off and not someone else. The boss just walked away.

Now, bosses don’t have hearts of steel so I know it pained them to walk their employees out the door yesterday. My husband’s co-workers confronted the boss by saying, ‘we would have gladly all worked 32 hours a week so he could have stayed.’

Wow. If only all employees, everywhere had this thought. Would there be lay offs? Would there be an unemployment rate? Could these lay offs be avoided by doing what my husband’s co-workers were willing to do for him? Who knows? I’m not going to make that judgment call. What is done is done and we move on. There is nothing we can do now so we move on.