This is bad news. GE Fanuc, Charlottesville’s 17th largest employer will furlough half of its employees, or roughly 300 people, for a two week period starting next week.
While layoffs on the scale of hundreds of employees at a time have yet to effect Charlottesville, this is the first sign that things will hurt. Furlough, in this case, means that GE will continue to pay for benefits of these employees but not pay salary. If GE Fanuc is having problems paying half of its employees, then surely layoffs should be expected.
Sorry for everyone involved in this, but things will get worse. We’ve been watching the labor market conditions and it looks like (doing very unofficial math) unemployment in the Charlottesville MSA could be over 5% by this time. Thoughts?
[pic from b-tal] [via Daily Progress]
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Everything is perfect in C-Ville. Unemployment will stay at 1% and home prices will continue upward. Nothing new here…keep walking.
holy shit
@1 Unemployed is probably more like 3% around here now and that never includes those who have stop looking for jobs. This sucks for them and I hope this is the only work stoppage they have to go though. Ge Fanuc has been a loyal and supportive coporate citizen in the county and I wish them the very best.
I’ll bet some of the the highest paid GE execs are taking temporary pay cuts to help out! Am I right, or what?
media general — owns daily progress, area weeklies & richmond times dispatch, etc. — is also doing some type of furlough thingy. two weeks must be taken off with no pay by all employees except the time off is to be spread out over a year so some people are working at all times and none of the places completely shut down ever.
Cadmus has laid off a few people, and LexisNexis has laid off one more here in Cville location (up to about 20-30 people now) – a few here, a few there – it all adds up…..
@1 @3 12/08 – Charlottesville City unemployment rate 4.6%, Charlottesville MSA unemployment rate 4.2%
For some interesting looks at the stats, see the Virginia Workforce Connection at
http://www.vawc.virginia.gov/faq.asp?session=faq
Thanks Hoome, it is even worse than I thought and today’s announcement makes that figure higher.
@6 – that’s from december.
There still seems to be confusion by everyone at UVA about the whole not hiring externally but moving internally. Administrators keep calling it a hiring freeze which is not correct (I think, at least from my perspective and what I was told the other day, they’re just saying it to keep from losing people therefore having positions cut preventing future hires). Even still, the numbers are only going to get higher and now’s the time to just weather the storm.
Back home, unemployment rate is almost 10%. Crazy times.
Charlottesville is one lucky little city. I’m so glad I live here in times like these: business is still relatively stable and whole neighborhoods haven’t been abandoned, like back in my home city of Phoenix.
couple UVA department-hirers told me on the phone today that they’d been ‘urged’ to hire only internal candidates, @10.
@13 Apparently if positions that need to be filled can’t be filled with qualifiable internals then they will consider external hires. So I’ve been told. It might do no harm to just keep checking the HR site throughout this whole cogsgwaggled mess.
I have the official inside line here guys…. all new UVA positions will be filled by an internal cube-farm based process called assmosis. HR will be contacting line supervisors to schedule all current employees for their orientation, which will involve pictures of management arses with lots of colorful arrows and your own tongue.
A CE credits (0.5) will be issued on completion.