Can you help me these three questions. It's a legal issues in reduction of workforce.?

Question

a. What role, if any, do you believe length of service should play in making decisions for a reduction-in-force in a non-union organization? Why?
b. To what extent can or should management consider gender, race, age, and other “protected class” designations when making reduction-in-force decisions?
C What additional strategy (or variation on a given strategy) would your team recommend to the key decision maker in the simulation to solve the challenge given?

Answer 1

What I think, and what is common practice in industry ... there's a world of difference there.

(a) If we are in an at-will state, meaning they can let anyone go whenever they please, and we can give notice and quit at any time, then it does not matter how long someone has been working there, don't need them any more, goodbye.

So for example, moving HQ to a different city. Various long time employees say "It will cost me $ 5,000.00 to move my household to the other city ... can the company reimburse some of that expense?" The company will probably say no, and do a little math ... this person has been working for us for X years & is now earning $ 55,000.00 a year. We can drop them, hire a new person to do the same job in the new city, at starting wages like $ 40,000.00 a year. Will there be some screwups because the new person might take several months to learn what the experienced person knew? Sure, but assumption is made that the cost of those problems are more than offset by $15,000.00 reduction in payroll.

There are states where union or no union, the employer has to give a REASON why they letting a person go. Under those circumstances it is still reasonable to say that there's less work to be done, so less people needed. Could be the reason there is less work is something got off-shored to another nation.

(b) Union or no union, right to work or not state, an employer can get in trouble if there is the APPEARANCE of work place discrimination.

I am the computer guy ... several years ago, the HR manager tells me that some lady applied for work with us, was not qualified for the work (she was too illiterate to fill in the employment application, and nature of the job was such that illiterate people cannot do it) and had filed complaint with some government agency claiming we discriminated against her because she was a white woman.

So they asked me for a statistical analysis of workers in the kind of job she has applied for, showing how many
* men
* women
* white
* black
* other ethnicity
* various ages

The statistics showed that the proportions of our work force in the work that she was applying for was almost identical statistically to the people living in our community, who might want work.

Now had she applied for a management position and made similar grievance she might have had a case, because at that time 90% of the managers were men.

The HR dept (Human Resources or Personnel) has access to Labor Statistics for a region, so they know how much of an impalance there can be relative to the regional labor statistics before a company gets in trouble for the appearance of discrimination in hiring and laying off practices.

(c) Make sure you have access to the kind of data that you would expect your HR manager to have access to.

Also have some kind of data on the volume of work that needs to be done, the internal staff qualified to do that work ... so you end up with

For job X ...with people working 50 hour week (or whatever the standard is) we need 2 1/2 people to do that work

The following people are qualified to do job W X and Y

so add up the numbers to make sure you got appropriate staffing to do what is needed.

Do analysis of the actual work load in each job.
Is there any way to do any of this differently that means less workers required to get the job done?
Is there any work we are doing, that the financial value to the company in doing this work, is outweighed by the cost of the clerical staff to get it done?

Some data is captured for reasons of risk avoidance.

Let's suppose in manufacturing, if we send out products that are flawed, the risk to the company is potentially millions of dollars. Like for example, there might be a plane crash, with 100 dead people's families suing.

If we reduce the amount of quality inspection going on, we can perhaps eliminate 1-2 people from the work force, saving their annual salary & associated taxes.

Is it worth taking a chance on losing millions of dollars, to save $ 100,000.00 a year?

Companies make that kind of decision all the time, with safety, computer security, other areas.

Answer 2

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice. I don't actually care what actual laws may apply. This answer is strictly my opinion of what considerations SHOULD be made.

a. I don't believe length of service should play any role in deciding which employees to keep or let go. I believe ALL such decisions should be based ENTIRELY on merit.
b. I don't believe "protected class" designations should exist. Therefore, I don't believe they should have any impact on personnel issues.
c. The company has employees to get work done. Those employees best able to do the work are the ones that should be employed.