April 2, 2012

Sharing the layoff burden with good government

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As much I hate to remind you, we're only a few weeks into our official presidential election year, and we still have more than seven months left to withstand the overheated rhetoric about "job creators," no-tax pledges and Etch-A-Sketch gaffes. Seven months--that's no April Fool's joke. Or maybe the joke's on us.

Since this whole silly campaign began, we've had to put up with a lot of crazy statements politicians have made in an attempt to grab the attention of the disinterested voter, but nothing rankles me more than hearing about how for every problem in America, government is always the problem. While, yes, the DMV is hardly a model of efficiency, state and local governments don't deserve the amount of bile that gets spewed at them by anti-government zealots. In fact, while the private sector was falling over itself trying to layoff as many workers as possible in the deepest chasm of the Great Recession, our state government was actually trying to do what it could to cushion the blow with programs designed not only to save jobs but also help private businesses recover more quickly.

Late last week, the Washington Employment Security Department (ESD) released the results of a survey about the effectiveness of their Shared-Work layoff-avoidance program in 2011. The way it works is that, rather than laying off people outright, participating companies would reduce the hours of their full-time workers by up to 50 percent while ESD would pick up some of the slack by paying out partial unemployment payments to those affected.

According to the survey results, more than two-thirds of employers who joined the program in 2011 said that it helped them survive the recession; another 20 percent said the program "probably helped." Most respondents said they had to reduce payroll hours by 20 percent or more. More than half said they saved two jobs last year from the layoff axe; 30 percent said three to five job were saved, while another 12 percent said five to 10 jobs were saved.

Last year, nearly 3,200 businesses in Washington took part in Shared-Work, ESD said, with more than 38,000 employees winning approval to participate, the second-highest total on record, following the pace-setting year of 2010. ESD also said it saved about 26,000 jobs from being eliminated and more than $42 million in unemployment payouts in 2011.

As ESD Commissioner Paul Trause put it: "The Shared-Work Program is one of the most effective tools offered by any government agency to save jobs and save businesses. Our economy would have been in worse shape, and our recovery would take longer, without this program."

Now, we can't expect to be doing cartwheels over this. After all, hours were reduced at many companies, no doubt causing some severe anxiety among the workforce, and ESD was only able to replace part of those lost wages. But the payoff is coming now. As companies are poised grow this year after many months of stagnation, those who participated in Shared-Work still have their best employees on the payroll and are better position than any competitors who must look for skilled talent all over again.

If you're in an industry that has been plagued with repeated rounds of layoffs due to sluggish economic conditions, it might behoove your employer to take part in this program to ensure that skilled workers don't get thrown under the bus the minute the economic climate shifts. Is your employer part of the Shared-Work program? It couldn't hurt to ask.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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economy, government, unemployment

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Tom Swanson | April 4, 2012 4:52 PM | Reply

Our small company participated in this program during the 2009-2010 recession. My only problem is that this program allows employers to avoid the tough choices that economic hard times often bring - deciding what employees are producers and what employees are expendable. The unintended consequence of "shared work" is that the producers take a pay cut in order to save the non-producers. Not good for esprit de corps!

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