Monday, February 2, 2009

Work And The Recession

Let me tell you about my job. Last weekend all employees got a letter in the snail mail from the Hospital Administrator. In it was an unpleasant message. Everybody was getting a pay cut of 3 percent. Some managers got as much as a 25 percent pay cut, and a few other employees were also laid off. About three months ago, almost everybody got a 3 percent salary increase after our annual evaluations, so the boss giveth and the boss taketh away, plus more. You see, our health and dental insurance premiums increased, our doctor’s visit copays increased, and mail order prescription medication costs increased too. Bad news indeed, but, is there anything good that can be taken out of this? With the current recession, and the unemployment rate in California running at 9.5 percent (10.5 percent in Long Beach), I am still grateful about having a job. I hope I can ride out the current situation until things get better. If only I didn’t lose so much money in the stock market last year…
I promised myself last week that the Nintendo WII would be my last major purchase for awhile. Anybody reading this blog, please hold me accountable to that promise.
I began asking my co-workers, since we had a 3 percent salary decrease, should we also cut our work effort by a corresponding 3 percent? Maybe instead of going the extra mile to take care of our patients, we should just go the extra kilometer.

2 comments:

Nancy Deprez said...

Wow! I cannot believe that they are doing that even in health care. I always though health care would be somewhat recession proof.

I did not know that Long Beach's unemployment was 10.5%!

Noel DLP said...

Thats what I thought too. But if people are unemployed, they have no health insurance, so I guess they get sick lesser.

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