What The Samhell Is Going On With Employers Nowadays ?!?
by
H. Kent Craig



Since the recession started cresting early last year, those of us in the project management ranks have begun to be told gossip about and personally experience employment horror stories unlike anything we've ever heard of or gone through in any hard times past.

There is a certain viciousness bordering on incredulous stupidity that some employers are trying to foist upon the middle-management PM ranks. Certain company owners are seemingly trying to change the "rules of the game" midstream, to throw the clock back not just to the good ol' days but all the way back to the middle ages. If this is because of fear or greed or a combination of both, the project management community doesn't care. All we can say to these certain employers is: "get real, folks!"

During a recession slash mild depression, all companies must make certain adjustments to remain competitive and keep their doors open. That's a given. But c'mon, guys, what very good recreational pharmaceuticals have you been taking lately?

I'm not talking about not giving cost-of-living raises, not paying out job bonuses because there are none because all new work had to be bid cheap, about mandating a hiatus in the company matching 401K contributions, about making do with old and decrepit tools because there's not any money for new ones, things like that.

I am talking about such nonsense as what happened to a colleague of mine who still works for a large mechanical contractor in the Northeast. Under the guise of company-wide cost-saving measures, he and six other senior PM's had, in quick succession: 1) their base salaries unilaterally reduced from around $80K per year to $50K per year, 2) their health insurance premiums no longer picked up by the company, they now having to pay 100% of the cost, 3) their company vehicles taken away and now only a $.31 cents per mile mileage allowance for travel on company time being paid (they're on the road daily, too!), 4) their company cell phones taken away and pagers issued instead, they being told that if they wanted cell phones for their own convenience they would have to pay for them themselves, and 5) several thousand dollars in previously agreed upon earned job bonuses which would have been paid out at company fiscal year's end in a couple of months' time now indefinitely held in escrow with the veiled suggestion that these bonuses had been effectively canceled by the company.

All this happened in less than a week. When he and the other PM's complained, their bosses told them if they didn't like the new terms of their employment, they could walk, the company didn't care if they stayed or left., that they would be quickly replaced if they did walk.


If these draconian measures had been company-wide, it would be one thing. Thing is, they were lied to. They later found out that these measures had been applied only to the project management team! Everyone else in the company who had their health insurance company paid (100% of all other employees), who had company vehicles, who had company cell phones, etc., none of the rest of these other employees benefits were touched, and to their knowledge no one else in the company suffered a salary cut, either. Gheezzz!

Another colleague who had lost his job as senior estimator for a $20M/yr contractor has only had one job offer since, as a senior estimator for a firm in San Francisco that offered him only $20 per hour with no benefits, no perks, no relocation assistance from his residence on the East Coast, and not even a guaranteed 40 hours per week because "there's just not that much work during some weeks to bid on to guarantee you forty hours every single week."

Yet another friend was recently fired from his $75K/yr position as a senior PM/estimator because he refused to "loan" his $9M/yr specialty mechanical contracting firm with whom he's invested almost nineteen years of his life into the sum total of what he had in his company 401K, which is around a hundred thousand dollars. His boss told him that anyone that didn't have enough confidence in the future of the company to make said unsecured loan to the company didn't deserve to work for the company, and fired him on the spot when he repeatedly refused to make the loan.

In my own little world, a local HVAC contracting company who had the reputation of being so great to work for and whom I had been talking to for some years about possibly coming on board finally made me an offer, an offer I could and did definitely refused. They had just fired their entire project management staff, all two project managers of it, and were re-staffing the department from scratch. I meet all their laundry-list skills and experience requirements and exceeded most of them. They made this offer: 1) a base salary of $12.50 per hour (no, that's not a misprint), 2) a flat car allowance of $200 per month, no other car expenses being covered, 3) no health insurance, no perks, no nothing else.

I couldn't help but openly softly giggle at the offer. I asked if she actually meant twelve-fifty an hour. She said yes. I asked if some helpers on their payroll didn't make more than that, and didn't their mechanics make around twenty-some per hour, with company vehicles usually furnished to them. She replied affirmatively. I asked if the PM's they had just fired didn't make about three to four times the base salary she was offering, which she also said yes to, adding "our management now sees project managers as overhead only, not profit centers, which is why we've accordingly adjusted our salaries for the positions".

I was so beyond flabbergasted I was almost speechless. After politely declining the offer, she had then the balls, eeerrrr, gall to then ask me if I knew any other "senior-level project managers who would be interested in working for these terms." I replied honestly that I didn't know of anyone, not even a junior PM-trainee prospect, who would work for what they were offering. She then replied "I know the jobs will be hard to fill, but we'll find someone willing to work for that". "Yes, someone", I mentioned to her "but someone even remotely qualified?" I politely asked.

I gotta ask, folks, what the samhell is going on? These are just a few of the worst of the latest round of horror stories that are being foisted upon our profession. Have one of your own you care to tell? Then please email it to me , and thanks for sharing!



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