Work Sharing and Coping Job Cutbacks

The recent state of the US economy has had a tremendous effect on lives of Americans causing higher unemployment, lower job security, and an uncertain future for American workforce and the state of Florida is no exception. The state of Florida’s unemployment percentage reached a record high 12.2 percent this month according to The Miami Herald, with the city of Tampa hitting a high of 11.7 percent, with rising unemployment many companies are cutting back hours from workers and asking them to take more vacation days.

Many businesses around Tampa are cutting back the amount of hours their employees are working to cut down of the out flow of cash in this downed economy, fewer and fewer people on shifts that used to be fully stacked, this all in an effort to save the companies money. Donald Johnson of the government funded Florida Department program “Clean City” had this to say, “They keep cutting back our hours, at first I was O.K. with it I thought good I get some more time to relax, but then we began to start hearing about how they might be firing a lot of people, I mean I don’t mind time off here and there but I need to have a job”. The firing gossip turned out to be nothing, but the cut back at hours still stand.

To prevent job loss and help stop unemployment a process called “work sharing” has been developed according to the St. Petersburg Times, It’s an effort to cut back on layoffs by cutting down on workers hours and splitting them up, for instance instead of a an employee working five days a week they would work four and the extra day of hours would be split up to other workers. The Times goes on to describe that employees can then gain unemployment benefits for the hours they have lost, the work sharing  idea makes sense and seems to work in the favor of people the employer and the employees. The employer gains by not having to lay-off valuable and experienced employees and the employees benefit by not take a detrimental loss to their hours worked, according to the St. Pete Times. Yet process is only described as a short time solution to what appears to be a long time problem though, the work sharing program falls under the “Short-Time Compensation” program developed by Florida state officials.

So what exactly is the long term solution to this problem of unemployment? Workers will eventually need their regular hours back to continue to live the way they did before the work sharing because the benefits of unemployment do not match their normal salaries and employers need to keep the costs of running their business to a minimum if they hope to make a profit. The only real solution to this problem is for the market to swing back to normal again so that people will start spending like they used too, but in the meantime hopefully work sharing will save a few people from losing their jobs.

To find out more about the work sharing program in Florida visit www.floridajobs.org/unemployment/uc_prog_stc.html.