The vacation is most certainly over

Today there was a meeting at work wherein it was announced that two of the people who had been laid off last June have grieved their layoffs successfully and will be getting their jobs back. This may be good news for them, but not for us.

The men were given a choice, last June, different from the rest of us.  We were all told that either our hours were going to be slashed from 35 to twenty five per week, or we could take an enhanced severance, or we could go into priority placement, wherein we would have a certain length of time, (in their case, a year) to find a new position at the university at full pay, but if they failed to find a new job within that time period, we would be unemployed.  Their choice came with one more problem: they were told their old positions no longer existed, and they could have a job that would be a band lower, at the reduced hours.  What these two have got back is their old jobs.

As a side note, there was a third woman who was let go, who is seeking to go on long term disability, as she has early onset Alzheimer's.  She has not gotten her position back, and the university is apparently fighting paying her LTD.

Part of the problem of their return is that it may affect the rest of us.  Because more people left than was anticipated, the management raised our hours from twenty five up to thirty.  We are often offered extra hours, to bring us up to the full thirty five.  With these two back, we may lose that.  We may even lose the thirty hours.  It is uncertain if they are getting full time hours or not. The resentment will be incredible if they get full time, and we lose.

Next, these two were the worst workers we had  They are both pure poison, one from malice and one from incompetence.  The malicious one sows discord at every turn and stabs people in the back for no other reason than for the fun of it.  The other one was one I worked with, and I usually ended up doing his job for him.  He was a pothead who did nothing, but, because he did nothing, he was constantly surrounded by work he needed to get done, (unlike the rest of us who cleared our desks) and therefore concluded he was the busiest one of us all.  Because he was the busiest, he deserved to take a break, which h did all day, every day.  He was poison because, for some reason, he was paid a band higher than the rest of us, who did the same job as he, often did his job for him, and yet he did nothing.  It isn't good to have someone like this in the workplace, someone everyone else can look at and say: "Why I am working my butt off, when he's sitting there doing nothing?"

Lastly, these two guys have just taken a year off at full pay, (neither of them seriously looked for new work) while the rest of us worked hard at reduced hours.  There is resentment over this. It may get worse.  It will get worse.