Even as unemployment numbers continue to creep up, the jobless numbers don't tell the whole story of how companies are trying to cut back on payroll expenses.
Increasingly, workers are being asked -- or told -- to go without pay for days or weeks as employers institute unpaid furloughs.
In a survey of its members on coping with the economy, the Society for Human Resources Management, based in Alexandria, Va., found that 17 percent of employers reduced workers hours last year, 9 percent had organization-wide workweek reductions, and 7 percent closed the business for short periods of time.
Georgia and California have announced worker furloughs, and in Arizona, the president, vice president and all of the college deans at Northern Arizona University will take three-day furloughs in 2010.
Gannett, the company that publishes the USA Today newspaper, announced in January plans for one-week unpaid furloughs for most of its U.S. employees, who would be required to take the time off by the end of this month. The furloughs apply to all nonunion employees (many of the company's newspapers are not unionized) and the unions have been asked to consider participating. An additional furlough plan for the second quarter was also recently announced.
And, while it isn't unheard of for assembly plants to shut down for a week or so in response to drops in demand, the lingering recession has spurred governments and businesses across the economic spectrum to try the tactic of saving jobs by placing employees on unpaid leave.
Workers at the Eaton Corp.'s electrical parts plant in Beaver County, Pa., are just returning to work after taking the past week off without pay. At Kennametal in Latrobe, Pa., furloughs are being staggered to limit disruption to the company's customers.
Pennsylvania's state government may soon join the crowd. "We believe this is the worst economic challenge that the state has had to face in recent history," Gov. Ed Rendell's spokesman Chuck Ardo said.
Other industries seeing employees take furloughs include the aircraft industry (Cessna is considering furloughs of its workers at its plant in Columbus, Ohio); professional sports (New York Jets business office workers lost two week of income and will have to take time off in the summer); and even bicycle manufacturing (Trek Bicycle Corp. had factory employees who make the company's road and mountain bikes in Waterloo, Wis., rotate weeks, one on and one off, last month).
(E-mail Ann Belser at abelser(at)post-gazette.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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