2/9/2013 3:02 PM
How are your seasonal employees classified? "At will" or "for cause"?
Our City Attorney seems to think that all employees including our seasonal staff should be "for cause" basically because he is afraid to take any lawsuit, no matter how frivolous, to court. From my understanding he also is expecting Federal legislation that will really clamp down on classifying "at will" employees as such. I'm not aware of any such rumblings but what do I know?
So the process moving forward is that if I have to terminate an employee I have to submit documentation for review by, first, the H.R. department (this could take awhile), my boss, and then the City Attorney.
For the life of me I can't fathom why an organization would to voluntarily handcuff themselves. In my 20 plus some years as a superintendent I've never fired a good employee. Why would I? Can you imagine the time constraints documenting each and every time we talk to a green, seasonal employee? How do you document when someone just doesn't get it?
I cringe at the thought of starting the termination process and then finding out the employee is a distant relative of someone in the loop and the crappy employee is allowed to come back to work. Talk about a loss of credibility with the rest of the staff. Then there is the time lag between the starting of the termination process to the hiring of a new employee. I am not exaggerating when I say this will take up to 8 weeks (one week for review of the termination, one for screening and interviewing applicants, and six weeks, yes six weeks, for our background check process to run its course.)
I was talking to a salesman who was a former superintendent. He was saying how the industry use to be fun but now almost all the supers he talks to a miserable. I can see why.