ACS COMMENT
Layoffs Of Chemical Professionals panies, where the termination benefits A s every American knows, some exceed the two weeks per year indicated from bitter personal experience, as a minimum, the employees frequentmany of our industries are going ly do not know the details. Thus, I sugthrough a consolidation that involves gest the following actions: significant, sometimes massive, layoffs of personnel. Chemists have not been • Chemical professionals or their immune. Of course, there have always employers should write to ACS with inbeen some layoffs of chemists, but in formation about the termination polithe past, it has usually been possible for cies in their companies and the extent to them to find other positions. With maswhich they follow the ACS guidelines. sive industrywide layoffs, the market Please address the letters to the Council can become supersaturated, making Committee on Economic & Professional new jobs hard to find. The question is, Affairs. what can the American Chemical Soci• If we find, as I expect, that there is ety do to help? a group of responsible employers who Ronald C. Breslow do follow or exceed these guidelines, or This question has been addressed in ACS president-elect perhaps some modified guidelines that the past and has led to the Professional also meet the need, we should publicize Employment Guidelines of ACS, adopttheir names. One hopes that the desire to join the Aed and approved by the ACS Board of Directors and list will induce other companies to adopt the guidenow in the fifth edition. It is available from ACS on lines as well. Even in difficult times, companies comrequest. Some relevant passages state the following: pete to hire the best candidates. Given a choice of po• "No chemical professional having a minimum of sitions, chemists will naturally be attracted to those 10 years' total service should be terminated except for companies that have such responsible policies. continuing evidence of previously documented inadIf the contraction of a company meets its real longequate performance or for cause. term needs, these guidelines will not prevent it. They • "A chemical professional terminated for any reamay, however, discourage short-sighted terminations son other than cause should receive severance pay for short-term profit. If the terminations come after a consisting of at least two weeks' salary for each year takeover, the new owners will have to take on the cost of service. of these policies, just as they take on other obligations. • "A summary of company policies and practices, Thus, they may think twice before firing everyone. including termination policies, should be supplied to Many companies are now finding that the financial the chemical professional at the time an employment benefit from contraction goes only so far and that offer is made." their future looks bleak if there are no more new These do not seem like excessively stringent restricproducts in the pipeline. Thus, perhaps we have seen tions on the freedom of employers, and indeed they the last of the massive terminations. In any case, are milder than what is required by law in some othchemistry professionals deserve the protections deer countries. However, the guidelines are not widely scribed in the ACS Professional Employment Guideknown, nor are they always followed. An informal lines. If the best companies will join us in acknowlsurvey indicates that many chemists are unaware of edging the validity of these guidelines, or in suggestthe termination policies in their companies, and they ing other guidelines that they can endorse, we may be need this information. It may, unfortunately, prove to able to help ameliorate the very difficult current be as important as information on retirement and problem of employment insecurity for our members. medical benefits. Even in the most responsible com-
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