When you have an office full of attendance issues, you can’t complain when it gets shuts down. Like it or not, it’s the people that you work with fault that don’t show up to work. Blame leadership, the union, whoever but it’s your peers that you should look at
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This reminds of me some twisting of words by my alma mater, Windstream Communications. In our call center, we were given 2 "emergency days" per year, which we could use without advance notice, before we'd start using sick days and accumulating occurrences or attendance points (the ones that can be used for disciplinary purposes).
One day we're having our usual Wednesday meeting when our director (who usually attends these) says she has an announcement. She's "received feedback from our center" from "multiple employees" who wish that we'd be held more accountable for our work. And her solution was to take away these 2 emergency days. No other changes.
Now, I remember a lot of employees complaining about receiving a trouble ticket passed down from the previous shift where an employee didn't make a call to the customer or dispatch a technician as they should have - but those people were PRESENT and didn't do their job. That's a different issue entirely. If someone wasn't in attendance, they wouldn't have gotten any work on that day anyway.
Come on!
It's sickening to see so many people blindly side with upper management concerning these layoffs. When federal law states that you must allow an employee unpaid time off for sickness after 1 year of employment, you don't decide to shut down the operation because the employee uses their benefits guaranteed by law. Call center employees are routed calls through an ACD which sends the oldest waiting call to the next available person - it's flexible and scales to the number of employees actually logged in their phones. If you have shrinkage due to absenteeism, sure the wait times will go up or you might have to recruit people for overtime. But Sally doesn't have to play catch-up and return 4000 calls when she gets back to her desk after taking time to have her first child.
As someone previously stated, It is ILLEGAL for the company to discriminate toward anyone for using protected FMLA Time! It's the f---ing law and ATT is the worst at targeting people who use it! You, management, or ANYONE has no clue what someone is going through and it's not your place or business to place judgment! Do you know how many people put on a smile and are literally dying on the inside and have huge problems they are trying to deal with? You put the stress of AT&T on top of that and it is called a BREAKDOWN! F--- AT&T, F--- the management! Plain and Simple! I am no longer there. I was fired long ago and I was a damn good employee and I saw many, many people that were dedicated employees go to work everyday and were FIRED because of their tenure! AT&T took away someone's livelihood because they were disposable to them. Again, F--- AT&T!
Take al, the FMLA, & WorkComp for stress related issues
Those lazy workers again sabotaging Randy's efforts to keep jobs here. Once again corporate America is the victim.
"That's not why people are losing jobs. It's totally out of your power. AT&T is just mowing through the company trying to get as many employees off pay-roll as possible. That's all."
My point regarding good attendance, particularly in the call center environment, is that there is redundancy. And when it comes to which center to shutter, attendance is a HUGE factor.
What if it is false absentism? Many people run contests and if they do certain things in sales, or call centers etc, they can leave early as a reward. As a result, certain unscrupulous managers will dig back months and months to uncover "unauthorized early dismissal" and manually give these people attendance points. This occurs when people transfer from one call center or store to another. Really, the employee has very little to prove otherwise....except others who have earned the right to go home earned the right also. There is a witch hunt coming for all of us.
@Q2a6DQL I agree with you. When it comes down to it, if they are going to surplus one of two groups, the group with the worst attendance will always be the one to go, no matter how good their numbers are. Keeping it #100. Seen too many this year surplussed because of it.
Not so. Our group has no attendance issues. It’s part of the 2020 plan. The company made no bones about wanting to get rid of all of the old ATT employees on the core contract it’s been pushed out to 2024, but it is still happening. New employees with no retirement, less benefits, and lower pay.
If you got fired for excessive absences you didn't want your job any way.
That's not why people are losing jobs. It's totally out of your power. AT&T is just mowing through the company trying to get as many employees off pay-roll as possible. That's all.
This is particularly true in the call center environment. As AT&T winds down it's support of legacy technologies such as dsl, centers will close. But even the company has admitted that this technology will be around for a while. It still has to be supported. Attendance is a huge factor in determining which center stays open and which center potentially gets new work.
These groups had used up their sick days, and were piling up occurrences and fmla time. Needless to say, they were let go.
Retaliation For Use of Sick Leave Illegal
Employers may not deny an employee the right to use accrued sick days, discharge, threaten to discharge, demote, suspend or otherwise discriminate against an employee for using or attempting to use sick leave
This post is absolutely true! I know of a few groups that got the ax the past year, and that's what it came down to. Absenteeism. You stand a much better chance of keeping your job if you show up! A group with good attendance will always win against one with bad attendance and the highest numbers.