My wife is an intelligent and well-qualified woman. She has a graduate degree and is, in my opinion, overqualified for her job. My wife works at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center (FSRMC). FSRMC recently announced its intent to close its in-house daycare center used by employees, on or before October 1. At a meeting, some executive announced (rather callously) that the rumors were true and that the daycare was closing. This same executive also stated that the daycare represented prime real estate and that the daycare was operating at a break even point. However, the hospital is in need of revenue and the daycare would be closing so that two new doctors could occupy the roughly 2,400 square foot area currently used by the daycare and bring in some revenue. I’m uncertain why two doctors need a space that is larger than my house. My wife states that there is plenty of space at the hospital that is not being utilized.

The daycare serves 42 families and employs 13 staff. In addition, the daycare provided quality service at a very competitive price to employees. The daycare was touted to potential employees as a benefit. It is also convenient and physically located at the hospital. It provided many benefits, such as allowing employees to visit their children while on breaks. A mother could drop in and breast feed, if needed. Since the daycare was located in the same building, it eliminated the drive that most people have to go through during their morning and evening commutes.

FSRMC is a non-profit company. Unfortunately for many employees of non-profit companies, they are not in it for the money. This leads to problems for them because their job is important because they are helping people; not because the make big money. Their pay and their benefits come second fiddle to helping out those in need. Their employers know that. Their employers take advantage of that. The employees are often the first to suffer in the name of the bottom line. This is the same company that wouldn’t give its own employee a bone marrow transplant due to insurance problems until the media got wind of the story.

The division of the hospital that my wife works for has a terrible morale problem. In fact, my home telephone rings constantly because my wife’s coworkers are calling to complain to the wife about whatever is currently happening. It’s distressing. In my wife’s division, every department head has been fired in the last one year. Every one! Now, if one or two managers get fired, that is easy to attribute to incompetence or poor job performance. Firing every department manager alludes to problems with upper management. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t worked in the corporate world. Also, many of those fired managers were later re-hired at lower paying positions.

So, why hasn’t my wife quit? One reason: the daycare. My wife has had opportunities for employment elsewhere. Some of these opportunities pay more and offer just as much opportunity to help people out. Me and the Mrs. are planning to have children. It would be convenient if our daycare was located where my wife worked and it was competitively priced, and it was. That benefit is worth money to us. The wife could work somewhere else for more money, but pay more for a less convenient daycare. So, she toughed out rounds and rounds of lay-offs; many firings of supervisors and managers; horrendous morale issues; more and more responsibility; and pathetic cost of living pay raises for a soon-to-be-non-existent daycare. The daycare was a benefit used to attract potential employees and therefore considered as part of the whole employment package. Of course, there are no plans to compensate employees for this lost benefit.

The closing was announced last week and the closing date is on or before October first. Anyone who has a child in daycare knows that three months is not ample time to find a new daycare. Most folks at FSRMC are going to be struggling to find a quality daycare in time.

What’s the Mrs. going to do? She’s not certain. But I tend to think she’ll think twice the next time an opportunity presents itself. She also asked what I thought she could do. I told her to contact the local media and that, hopefully, the media would run a heartrending story about the poor oppressed hospital workers. I contacted the News Sentinel (and there was a little blurb) and I contacted WATE, who did about a three minute news story on it. That news story mentioned that employees were afraid to speak on camera for fear of being fired and how many people the daycare served. My wife mentioned that the FSRMC Human Resources department sent out a request for a list of people who spoke up at the announcement meeting as soon as they learned that camera crews were on the premises. So, yeah, people were scared of losing their jobs. The WATE story wasn’t hard enough on the hospital, in my opinion (the link to the story appears to have disappeared).

I told her their next course of action could be to stage a protest or a walkout. Of course, I warned her, a walkout couldn’t include essential life-saving emergency employees. I doubt the employees will organize such activities as most of them genuinely fear for their jobs. I tend to think the daycare is a lost cause at this point.

Update: Link to the WATE article.

Update2: A reader offers the following fact checks:

1) The Enrichment Center is not in the same building as the hospital, but catty-cornered across the street in the Newland Professional Building. FSRMC, the professional buildings, Thompson Cancer Center, Laurel Plaza and Children’s Hospital are all connected by tunnels, however.

Apologies for the error. My info came from talking to people and I got the impression it was attached. Of course, it is still conveniently close.

2) To my knowledge doctors cannot have personal practice office space inside the hospital itself.

I suppose this implies that the daycare space will merely be rented out.

3) The lady never received a bone marrow transplant, to my knowledge, and in fact died recently.

Truly unfortunate. I wonder if her passing could have been prevented with the transplant.

4) The daycare isn’t technically an employee benefit – the hospital pays about half in subsidies and the parents pay about half in tuition. It’s not on the same line as 401(k)’s or insurance or PTO.

It’s a benefit in that employees can use it. The employees do have to pay for it. I wonder if the subsidies will continue when the daycare goes, which is not unheard of in non-profit companies.

Posted in uncategorized on July 15th, 2003 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |