Posted on 03/31/2020 7:13:19 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
AUSTIN (KXAN) – The company behind a plan last week to cut some of its employees’ pay checks if the $2-trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill was approved has now changed its mind.
The plan would’ve allowed the company to reduce paychecks by the amount of stimulus payment expected from the government.
The company wanted those workers to sign what it called its “Employee Emergency Compensation Fund.”
The agreement would have also allowed the company to take 50% of the stimulus act’s $500 per child credit.
A worker who asked that we not identify him provided KXAN a copy of the letter last week. The worker also asked that we not identify the company because he did not want any fallout over the company’s plan to negatively impact his coworkers’ ability to continue earning a living.
The company went unidentified until the company sent KXAN a statement Monday. The statement was sent from a public relations company on behalf of ImageNet Consulting. The statement was attributed to the company’s president, Pat Russell.
While there was uncertainty about the federal government response, we also asked a small group of employees to reduce their compensation by an amount equal to any government support they received,” Russell wrote in the statement. “Our intentions were to serve the greater good and protect our most vulnerable employees. However, we understand our plan was ill-advised. We have rescinded the potential program, and we apologize for any pain or confusion it caused.”
Russell said his company was trying to figure out how to deal with what he called “massive business disruptions” related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pay reduction plan was their way of “…ensuring we could keep as many people as possible employed for as long as possible. We implemented a series of steps to cut costs
(Excerpt) Read more at wlns.com ...
Not a big surprise. It’s Austin.
Always beware of “the greater good”.
“ImageNet”?
Do they manage your internet image?
Their image on the internet is mud.
Good chance some federal labor wage laws were violated by their attempt to extort their employees.
Pretty ballsy move. How did they imagine it would _not_ come to light?
I can actually see the company’s point if they were doing this to reduce the amount of money they were paying to employees who have been furloughed and are not working. The optics of this were terrible, because when the story workers made the rounds I had assumed that this was being done to employees who ARE working through this calamity.
That’s what I assumed at first, but now I’m speculating that wage laws would treat this differently if it was being done to employees who are being temporarily furloughed. If that’s the case, then the company is doing the employees a favor just to keep them on the payroll while they aren’t working.
[Good chance some federal labor wage laws were violated by their attempt to extort their employees.]
Pretty ballsy move. How did they imagine it would _not_ come to light?
Was “furloughed” stated in any of the previous FR threads?
It wasn’t. That’s why my initial reaction to this story was that it had to be fake. I didn’t see any legal basis for a company to reduce its compensation to employees for work they had done under an employer-employee relationship. Now, I’m assuming the employees ARE furloughed — so the employer technically doesn’t owe them a penny.
Here's the CEO's mea culpa- https://news.imagenetconsulting.com/imagenet-consulting-releases-statement-on-covid-19-response.
Interestingly, about a week ago, they kicked off an initiative to assist hospitals by 3D printing medical parts that were in short supply- https://news.imagenetconsulting.com/imagenet-provides-3d-printed-medical-parts-to-hospitals. Oh well, so much for that goodwill.
They do IT consulting and manage networks. I call utter BS. IT folks are up to their keisters in this setting up people to work from home and managing the office side to allow that work. Big and small companies are using outside IT people like this on a 24/7 basis. Companies like this are working their fingers to the bone at the moment and have no downtime. Business has NEVER been better.
Too bad...Ya know what they'd say to individuals? "Ya should have saved more and been prepared."
PS. I am in that business.
That mea culpa rings hollow. Not a word of truth in it.
Not a word of truth in what that guy said. It is an IT services company. Our industry is ass over teakettle right now supporting all the work from home stuff.
What's worse, what this company CONSIDERED or what the Kennedy Center did?
Even if they are furloughed, they should not be extorted. Do they have a written contract that says they will be brought back to work when this shut down farce ends?
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