Author: Site Staff

An outbreak of food poisoning or West Nile virus draws attention to public health agencies. After the emergency passes, they tend to fade into the background as they conduct low-profile work like improving maternal and infant care.

Such anonymity causes a problem when the organizations try to replace their nurses, epidemiologists and laboratory technicians. Those roles fail to spark the imagination of college students and other potential workers—even while demand for health services rises because of worries about pandemic viruses and bioterrorism.

“We are facing a crisis in our public health workforce,” says Michelle Gourdine, former deputy secretary for public health services in Maryland.

Nearly half of the 500,000 people who work in public health nationwide will be eligible to retire over the next five years, according to the Center for State and Local Government Excellence in Washington. Health departments are reporting that 20 percent of their jobs are unfilled and the turnover rate is 14 percent.

Low salaries and competition from private-sector labs and hospitals deplete the potential labor pool. So does the lack of creative marketing by health agencies.

“It’s exciting work; it’s challenging,” says Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County & City Health Officials. “It’s often invisible, we hope, because it’s often successful. We in public health don’t know how to sell it.”

This lack of interest endures despite the increased emphasis on the field following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“If you could spell epidemiologist, you could be one,” Libbey says.

Some states have implemented programs to help increase the number of people who are entering the field, according to Jim Pearsol, chief program officer for public health performance at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Alabama has set up a partnership with public health schools at state universities. Colorado has established mentoring programs and tries to rehire retirees. In Indiana, medical residents go through a rotation in a public health department, and doctoral candidates can complete their dissertations after being hired.

On the federal level, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, have introduced a bill that would fund scholarships and loan repayment assistance for students seeking a public health job. It also would provide midcareer training for people in the field.

During the last week of February, a House companion measure was introduced for the first time by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-California.

That breakthrough notwithstanding, generating momentum for legislation can be difficult.

“We’re working against a philosophy that the market will take care of workforce shortages,” says Donna Brown, government affairs counsel at the health officials association.

With declining tax revenue caused by the economic downturn, there’s also an attitude at the federal level that state and local governments must do more.

“That’s not a realistic expectation,” Brown says, because they are under their own fiscal pressure.

Operating effectively in those conditions has created another problem for public health agencies.

“We are able to do a lot with limited resources,” Gourdine says. “That may be our Achilles heel.”

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

As expected, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, March 24, declined to review a federal appeals court ruling that effectively upholds employers’ ability to reduce health care benefits when retirees become eligible for Medicare, putting an end to nearly eight years of litigation and uncertainty.

In a unanimous ruling in June 2007, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had the authority to implement a rule to exempt retiree health plans from the Age Discrimination in Employment Act when those plans reduce benefits for retired workers after they become eligible for Medicare.

The EEOC proposed the rule in 2003 as a way of counteracting a decision by the 3rd Circuit three years earlier that found the plans were subject to ADEA. That decision, known as the “Erie County” case, exposed employers to age discrimination lawsuits if they cut retiree health care plan benefits when retirees reached age 65.

“Erie County” is a reference to the Pennsylvania County that was sued by older retirees over the design of its health care plan.

The practical effect of the EEOC rule, which the agency finalized last year, is that employers can provide a two-tier system of retiree heath care coverage, with younger retirees receiving richer benefits than Medicare-eligible retirees.

The EEOC feared that without such a rule, employers would equalize retiree health care benefits by reducing younger retirees’ benefits to the level provided to older retirees, or eliminate retiree benefits altogether.

But AARP had asked the Supreme Court to review the 3rd Circuit ruling upholding the EEOC’s right to issue the ADEA retiree health care plan exemption rule.

Filed by Jerry Geisel of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

 

Among companies that have set up on-site health care clinics, the most common motivation was a desire to improve worker productivity, a survey shows.

The survey, released March 19 by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, compared the use of such facilities by early and recent adopters, with early adopters defined as those companies that set up clinics before 2000.

Researchers found that, among both recent and early adopters, 67 percent were motivated by an interest in enhancing the productivity of their workers. In addition, reducing medical costs is a growing priority, cited by 70 percent of recent adopters but only 49 percent of early adopters.

Other factors included improving access to care—44 percent of recent adopters and 33 percent of early adopters—and improving quality of care, which was cited by 30 percent of recent adopters and 12 percent of early adopters.

The survey results are based on responses from 84 human resources and health benefits managers at organizations that have at least 1,000 employees and operate on-site health care centers.

Immunizations, screenings and urgent care treatment are the most common services offered by on-site health clinics: 81 percent of recent adopters and 91 percent of early adopters offer immunizations; 78 percent of recent adopters and 88 percent of early adopters offer screenings; and 63 percent of recent adopters and 75 percent of early adopters offer urgent care.

There were disparities in other areas, however. Of the long-established clinics, 44 percent offer physical therapy and 46 percent offer mental health or employee assistance program counseling, while among recent adopters, those percentages drop to 22 percent and 15 percent, respectively. But 44 percent of recent adopters offer pharmacy benefits, compared with 23 percent of early adopters.

The study also showed that significant gaps exist in the integration of data between the on-site health center and other health and productivity initiatives. Thirty-nine percent of surveyed companies link their disease management programs with their on-site health centers, and 30 percent link the centers to their nurse lines. Early adopters of on-site clinics, however, are much more likely to integrate their centers with their EAP—65 percent do so—than recent adopters, at 22 percent.

All on-site health clinics surveyed are struggling to measure the return on investment from such clinics: 68 percent of early adopters and 52 percent of recent adopters either don’t measure or don’t know their return on investment.

Filed by Kristin Gunderson Hunt of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

At a congressional hearing earlier this month, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, railed against, among other things, the severance packages that marquee chief executives have been receiving of late.

Specifically, Waxman criticized the exit packages given to Stanley O’Neal, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, and Charles Prince, the departed chief of Citigroup.

“Our nation’s top executives seem to live by a different set of rules,” Waxman said.

But generally, it appears the vast majority of companies are not raising the ante when revisiting a severance package with an outward-bound chief executive.

According to a new report from Watson Wyatt, 54 of the 70 companies studied by the consulting firm, or 77 percent, did not provide their exiting CEOs with any termination payments beyond what was disclosed to shareholders in their 2007 proxies.

Watson Wyatt examined 8-K filings for outgoing CEOs between April and December 2007 and cross-checked with the proxies their companies filed in early 2007 to make the determination, noted Ira Kay, the firm’s global director of compensation consulting.

“The SEC required disclosure of potential termination payments for the first time last year, and an overwhelming majority of companies stuck to their proxies,” Kay said. “If companies want to be able to defend large cash and stock incentives to their CEOs, they need to be delivering on these peripheral compensation promises.”

Of the 23 percent of companies that did deviate from their proxies, Kay said some ended up offering CEOs longer non-compete agreements, while others made ad hoc payments to CEOs for “unspecified transition services.” Watson Wyatt found these companies increased compensation for their CEOs at termination by roughly $600,000.

Severance packages have become a hot topic of late.

In addition to Waxman’s hearings, some shareholder groups have complained bitterly about generous packages awarded to CEOs at companies that have performed poorly.

An increase in CEO turnover has also placed a spotlight on the topic. According to consulting firm Liberum, CEO turnover in the first two-and-a-half months of this year is up 22 percent over the same period last year.

Meanwhile, CFO turnover is only up 2 percent so far this year, Liberum found.

Filed by Mark Bruno of Financial Week, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

Companies seeking visas for highly skilled immigrants will be restricted to one application for each job candidate, according to a new federal regulation.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Wednesday, March 19, that it would prohibit employers from filing multiple H-1B visa applications for the same employee.

The immigration service, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, will deny multiple petitions for the same candidate and not refund filing fees. It will allow a parent company and its subsidiary to make an application for the same worker for different positions.

The rule will go into effect as soon as it is published in the Federal Register—perhaps this week.

The visas, which allow immigrants with the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor’s degree to work in the country, are coveted by technology companies. 

Last year, the 65,000 H-1B cap was exceeded on April 2, the first day that applications were accepted for fiscal year 2008. This year, the cap is likely to be reached on or shortly after the April 1 deadline.

If that happens, the immigration service will allocate H-1B visas through a lottery system, just as it did last year. The first 20,000 H-1B workers who have a master’s degree from a U.S. university are exempt from the H-1B cap.

Each year, technology firms chafe at the hiring limits placed on highly skilled foreign nationals. They argue that there are not enough U.S. workers to fill open positions. They also say that the United States should retain foreign science and engineering students who matriculate at U.S. colleges and universities.

Critics of the visas say that they rob U.S. citizens of jobs and allow companies to depress high-tech wages by hiring foreign workers.

In congressional testimony last week, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates warned that if H-1B caps are not increased, the U.S. will lose its technology edge.

“American companies simply will not have the talent they need to innovate and compete,” he said.

Companies are becoming discouraged by the H-1B logjam, according to Bob Meltzer, CEO of Visanow, a firm that provides automated immigration services. Meltzer said the number of Visanow clients has risen by about 40 percent since last year, but the number of H-1B applications they’re filing has gone up only 15 percent.

Companies are put off when they lose out in the H-B process.

“It’s a big cost in terms of money, resources and energy,” Meltzer said. “A couple [companies] are saying, ‘Heck no, we’re not going to do that. We lost a lot of money last year.’ ”

Gates’ testimony spurred action on Capitol Hill to change H-1B policy. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, introduced a bill that would raise the cap to 130,000 for fiscal year 2009 and later to 180,000. It also would eliminate the 20,000 cap on H-1B visas for immigrants with master’s degrees.

Reps. Patrick Kennedy, D-Rhode Island, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, have introduced a measure that would make it easier for foreign nationals who have earned a doctorate from a U.S. university to gain U.S. residency.

Congressional skeptics of H-1B visas also have offered legislation. A bill written by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, would require all companies applying for H-1B visas to certify that they have tried to hire U.S. workers first.

Their bill would mandate that employers pay a prevailing wage and prohibit them from outsourcing H-1B employees to other companies. It also would strengthen Department of Labor enforcement.

Grassley and Durbin have released an analysis that shows the three biggest users of H-1B visas in fiscal year 2007 were Indian companies—Tata Technologies, Wipro and Satyam Computer Services.

Immigration legislation may not be viable on Capitol Hill. The atmosphere for the issue is volatile and brittle following the collapse of a broad Senate bill last year that would have strengthened border and work-site enforcement while creating a path toward residency for the approximately 12 million undocumented workers in the country.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Libby Sartain, the head of HR at troubled Internet company Yahoo, plans to resign at the end of the month.

Sartain, among the highest-profile human resources leaders in the nation, said her decision to step down after roughly seven years at Yahoo was not prompted by pressures on the job but fulfills a long-discussed plan to spend time on her Texas ranch.

The 53-year-old intends to take off the rest of 2008 and then consider other options including non-profit work.

“My work is done here,” Sartain told Workforce Management in an interview Tuesday, March 18. “I’m just taking a little bit of a break.”

Sartain says she will be replaced as “chief people Yahoo” by David Windley, who has served as a Yahoo vice president of HR.

Yahoo, a pioneer on the Internet, has weathered tough times over the past year, including slumping profits. It reportedly has laid off more than 1,000 employees this year. And the company recently was targeted by Microsoft in an unsolicited takeover bid.

Sartain came to Yahoo in 2001 after serving as head of HR at Southwest Airlines.

She served as chair of the Society for Human Resource Management in 2001 and has co-written two books: HR From the Heart: Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great Business and Brand From the Inside: Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your Employees to Your Business.

Under her watch, Yahoo was named one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in America in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Sartain also has come under criticism. Kara Swisher, a tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Web site, wrote last year that “Sartain does attract an unusual amount of ire from some in the company for not being as supportive as one might hope.”

Sartain said Tuesday that she was not worried about popularity, but results. “I didn’t feel any pressure to leave,” she said.

Sartain said she has talked about leaving the Internet company for some time, but firmed up plans last fall as the company began a restructuring effort. She said it was clear that the effort, led by co-founder Jerry Yang, would last three or four years.

Recognizing that she wouldn’t be there for the entire project, she told Yang she’d leave in about six months. Sartain came up with the end-of-March departure date in January, she says.

She says her proudest accomplishments at Yahoo include shepherding the firm’s rapid growth in personnel, from some 3,000 employees when she arrived to 14,300 at the end of 2007, even as Yahoo competed for talent against the likes of Google.

After a 30-year career in HR, she’s planning to relax on a ranch outside of Austin that once was occupied by her great-great-great-grandfather.

“I want to take some time off and watch my cows graze,” she says.

—Ed Frauenheim

Shelia Gray is tired of hearing people badmouth recruitment process outsourcing.

She recalls one instance at a recruiting conference a few years ago where someone stood up and denounced employers who engaged in RPO because “you don’t outsource things of value, and recruiting is part of value.”

“The reality is that most of us that are doing RPO are not outsourcing the hiring decisions; we are outsourcing the pieces of hiring that we need help with,” says Gray, who is director of global talent acquisition at International Paper. “Recruitment process outsourcing is not like outsourcing other HR processes.”

That’s why Gray, with the sponsorship of the HRO Association, a group of HRO vendors, buyers and consultants, has spearheaded the creation of the RPO Buyers Group.

The goal of the consortium, which is made up of large employers that have engaged in recruitment process outsourcing, is to be independent and objective and establish some research, benchmarks and metrics in the field of RPO, says Gray, who is chair of the group. It has six members, but 50 more have shown interest, she says, declining to name the members since the group is still in its infancy. All of the companies are Fortune 500 companies with at least 30,000 employees.

“We want people who are involved in the strategic direction of RPO at their companies, not necessarily who manage the day-to-day relationships with RPO providers,” Gray says.

During the past couple of years, the buzz about RPO has been gaining momentum, but it’s unclear whether the hype is being generated by real buyer interest or just by vendor promotion, experts say.

“Most employers would admit that they have a problem attracting and recruiting talent, but they aren’t ready to pull the trigger on RPO,” says Stan Lepeak, managing director of research for EquaTerra, a Houston-based sourcing advisor. “There isn’t huge adoption of RPO.”

Since the RPO market is still so new, the buyers group could help establish standards around pricing and service-level agreement language, says Lisa Rowan, a consultant at IDC.

Rowan estimates the RPO market is still under $1 billion.

The RPO Buyers Group will work in conjunction with the RPO Alliance, a group of vendors, buyers and RPO experts, but it will also have separate meetings that will be exclusive for members.

On December 10 and 11, the two groups came together for the second annual RPO Summit in Washington, says Richard Crespin, president of the HRO Association.

“This is a challenging and new environment for many employers,” Crespin says. “You can’t go to Amazon and buy RPO for Dummies.

—Jessica Marquez

The United Auto Workers is demanding job guarantees from American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. to end a 3-week-old strike.

General Motors has contracted hundreds of millions of dollars of new business annually with American Axle. The union wants those axles and other parts built in UAW-represented U.S. plants, not in Mexico, said a source close to the situation.

The union demanded similar new-work commitments to end strikes at GM and Ford Motor Co. last fall during master contract negotiations.

The job guarantees are needed to salve the pain of concessions the UAW must make at American Axle to bring wages and benefits more in line with the axle maker’s competitors, said Dave Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research think tank in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“Plant investment is the quid pro quo,” he said.

American Axle CEO Richard E. Dauch is demanding that the 3,600 striking workers agree to cuts that would halve wages to about $14 an hour. That is the average wage paid by rival Dana Holding Corp.

The union is rightfully nervous that American Axle will move future GM work to its Mexican operations if progress isn’t made, Cole said.

Union sources say that is happening with axles that American Axle will supply for the redesigned 2009 Chevrolet Camaro. American Axle plans to ship Camaro axles almost 2,000 miles from its plant in Guanajuato, Mexico, to GM’s assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, they say.

“We’re not saying we are moving to Mexico,” American Axle spokeswoman Renee Rogers said. But without a U.S. cost-competitive wage structure, she warned, new programs could go to American Axle plants with a lower wage and benefit structure than the five company factories now on strike.

In addition to its Mexican plant, American Axle has four U.S. plants with a different, lower-compensation UAW contract that are not on strike.

Last year, American Axle idled a Buffalo, New York, plant that had expected to get the Camaro work. That plant is about 130 miles from Oshawa.

American Axle supplies axles for all GM pickups and SUVs built in North America.

The strike has idled seven GM assembly plants and hampered production at 22 other GM parts plants.  It also has halted production of the Chevy Silverado and other light trucks.

Filed by David Barkholz and Robert Sherefkin of Automotive News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

Recent veterinary school graduates are likely to work in suburban pet clinics. That may be good for Fido, but it’s bad for livestock destined for the nation’s kitchens and restaurants.

The Department of Labor projects 28,000 veterinary job openings by 2012. Currently,universities produce about 2,500 vets each year. The annual shortfall is projected to be about 5 percent, according to Mark Lutschaunig, director of governmental relations for the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The problem goes beyond sheer numbers. If there aren’t enough veterinarians to vaccinate herds, treat diseases, deliver calves safely and ensure that foreign food sources are safe, tainted meat and other toxic products could be the result.

Veterinarians are “critical if we’re going to maintain a healthy food supply and keep foreign animal diseases out of the country,” Lutschaunig says. “This is probably one of the most important issues the profession has faced in the last 30 years.”

The limited labor pool of large-animal veterinarians is addressed in legislation that renews federal farm programs. A provision in the Senate bill would provide $1.5 billion in grants over 10 years to universities to fund research and increase the number of students who will enter agricultural biosecurity.

The broader farm legislation is in House-Senate negotiations. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is working with Capitol Hill leaders to craft an alternative measure that overcomes objections the president has to the congressional versions. The law expires March 15.

A law that hasn’t yet gone into effect addresses a key aspect of the shortage. In 2003, Congress approved a loan repayment program for veterinarians who agree to work in food supply.

The Department of Agriculture hasn’t yet written regulations that would make the program functional. Many veterinary students graduate with more than $100,000 in debt and receive starting salaries of $50,000 to $60,000.

Loan forgiveness is critical to attracting vets to rural regions, and some states have their own programs in place.

“We need some of our graduates to come back, and that’s the only way we’re going to do it,” says Arlyn Scherbenske, who owns a veterinary practice in Steele, North Dakota.

Scherbenske employs two full-time and four part-time vets as well as two technicians. They tend to about 30,000 head of cattle in a 50-mile radius and do two or three small-animal surgeries each day.

Scherbenske filled recent openings through “very aggressive” recruiting that included traveling to Kansas State University. But he says there is a “huge shortage” of vets in rural areas, where most of the food-supply work occurs.

The dearth is due in part to the retirement of solo practitioners and to the trend among young vets to work in group practices to lower costs and achieve better work/life balance.

If they hang out their own shingle, they have to be on call almost all the time, which can require working outside at night in poor weather.

“You are the emergency clinic,” Scherbenske says.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Chrysler plans to shut down for two weeks this summer, according to a memo sent by CEO Bob Nardelli to employees on Friday, March 14.

The company will take a “two-week mandatory shutdown for the weeks of July 7 and July 14,” Nardelli said in the memo.

“As a private company, we need to think like owners and do our part to accelerate Chrysler’s recovery and transformation,” he said.

Workers will have to take vacation during the period unless they make special arrangements with the company. The move affects the majority of the company’s 15,061 salaried employees and 56,517 hourly workers around the world.

Some operations will need to keep working during the designated period “to support business-critical activities,” the memo said. Such “business-critical” activities would include sales and dealer support functions, a company spokeswoman said.

“Employees who have already used their vacation days, have insufficient earned vacation for the year or are otherwise committed to noncancelable vacation plans during other time periods should work with their local management to make alternative arrangements,” the memo said.

Chrysler has never had a companywide shutdown before, said Mary Beth Halprin, a Chrysler spokeswoman.

“This is the first year Chrysler is implementing a shutdown,” she said.

Some employees who had already taken their allotted vacations might have to take the two weeks without pay, she said.

Nardelli’s message told employees the company was taking the mandatory vacation plan “in order to create better alignment and efficiency across organizational lines and boost productivity.”

Chrysler, General Motors and Ford Motor Co. typically idle U.S. plants in early July for vacations and shut individual manufacturing operations at various times to retool when they have car and truck model changeovers.

Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove said the shutdown wouldn’t affect Chrysler employees at two Canadian plants because there’s a normal summer shutdown anyway.

Hargrove called the shutdown a “good business decision.”

The U.S. auto market has slumped by a wider margin than most analysts had anticipated last summer, when Cerberus completed its acquisition of its majority stake in Chrysler. The company has indicated that it is trying to step up its restructuring efforts in response.

Nardelli has repeatedly said that the automaker would focus on bolstering its cash position, and Chrysler has taken a number of cost-cutting steps in recent weeks.

Chrysler announced last week that it was shutting a design studio outside San Diego it has maintained since the early 1980s.

The automaker has also taken a hard line in negotiations since late last year with bankrupt parts supplier Plastech Engineered Products in an effort to steer clear of a more expensive bailout for the privately held company.

Chrysler’s U.S. sales are down almost 13 percent in the first two months of the year.

Filed by Automotive News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.