is anyone else being laid off, reduced hours, etc?

[ceccia]

starting about a month ago, management started making noises about how the new medicare regulations that take effect in jan 2015 are going to kill their profits. we got a steady stream of not-so-subtle hints that we would all be lucky to make it through. idk if it's even true about the new regs, or if they're using that as an excuse - 6 months in advance! - to get rid of staff to increase their profits. after all, they're currently building two brand new high-end facilities. if the company was really hurting for money, wouldn't they be closing facilities instead of opening new ones?

anyway. either way, they've started seriously reducing hours for everyone who is more costly - nurses with experience, BSN/MSN nurses, PRN nurses (including me), etc. and hiring lots of full time techs/aides and new grads (at ridiculously low salaries ). It looks like they're hoping the more expensive staff will leave if their hours are reduced enough.

i'm scared because i've been fence-sitting this entire year - i've been wanting to take the plunge and quit my day job and really go sink-or-swim with my business, but to be honest i'm kinda terrified of failure and of not having a paycheck so i couldn't bring myself to quit. it appears the universe/the free market/whatever is making the decision for me, since my company is basically getting rid of me. they hired a new grad LPN a month ago and since then i've had about 1/3 of the hours that i usually get.

is this a thing that's happening everywhere? is it happening in your workplace? if you're being made redundant or having your hours reduced, what are you doing about it?

[Kaytimm]

Power through!

[AutumnApple]

A hospital I worked at did this. They cut all but a few PRN staff positions, with who got to remain PRN being determined by performance ratings. The rest had to take a staff position or move on.

They loved it at first. It seemed they had cut just enough positions to save money but left enough survivors to get by too. That changed after about......oh, one year.

Census picked up, some nurses retired (nurses they hadn't expected to) and many of the new grad nurses weren't working out. Some new grads simply couldn't handle the position, which is expected but, of the o es who could.....well over 50% of them left after one year. The hospital was having trouble covering its shifts. I moved on to another job about this time for a job that offered me a schedule that worked better with my school hours.

I kept in touch with friends though, and things reached critical mass. They had so much trouble covering shifts, they had to redo their policies on scheduling. They no longer offered rotating weekends off, 36hrs stopped being full time (with people being grandfathered if you already did it) and everyone had to be available for either evenings or nights. No more day shift only nurses.

I guess you can imagine what the moral was like. To this day, years later, this hospital is know as the place new grads go to get their one year experience, then they move on. Things have improved, but not by much. 36hrs is still not FT, but they're staffed well enough to give rotating weekends off again. With all the changing things and then retracting said changes that went on though......PRN staff never returned. In fact, I was recently looking for a job and got in touch with a friend from there and from what they said, it got worse for PRN staff. Now, they only get paid a dollar or two more than everyone else. The hospital said the advantage to being PRN is you make your own schedule and that is enough of a benefit in itself, no need for so much extra pay. Their words, not mine.

From what I understand, there was major shake up in upper management twice. So, it seems playing with staff too much backfired on them. This won't save your job though, as I said.....even though they retracted a lot of things, the decisions about PRN staff never changed.