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SRF Walrus > Layoffs - The downsizing of SRF has begun > What happened
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member108 Registered User (11/23/02 10:28 am) Reply	What happened There have been a few layoffs already but the big news is that they just had meetings with all the employees to explain that there would be a series of layoffs in ALL departments starting right after Christmas. No real explanation given other than they are going to outsource some of the work. The outsourcing has already started. Outsourcing was not given as the reason for all the layoffs, just part of them. SRF said they felt bad about the hardship that would cause seeing how they don’t provide unemployment insurance or allow their medical benefit plan to be extended with the Cobra Plan (as most companies do). What they are going to do is give people this one month notice and help them with their resumes. Recently SRF has been giving some amount of severance pay when they layoff (fire) people. There was no mention of that yet. Of course giving the entire staff a one month notice may not come across as a compassionate act. You can imagine the mental state at the moment? Everyone thinks they might be laid off! Actually the insiders probably think it can't happen to them. Some feel quite important and part of the "real" loyal SRF. Are they in for a surprise. Welcome to service inside SRF. Have a nice holiday.
srflongago Registered User (11/23/02 12:48 pm) Reply	Re: What happened Quote: "SRF said they felt bad about the hardship that would cause seeing how they don’t provide unemployment insurance or allow their medical benefit plan to be extended with the Cobra Plan (as most companies do)." A part of Federal Erisa Cobra was to make it not optional to organizations with recognized health plans of the usual sort to terminate health plan coverage immediately at discharge, forcing the organization to continue at cost for 18 months if applied for in a certain number of days. Cal-Cobra extended this from large to small health plans (3-19 employees I think). I am very surprised California allows ANY employer to restrict access to their cobra when terminated. This is not possible in my state. The employees may have been misinformed, I do not know. It is well to check that SRF is in compliance with the law. The Feds and Cal say that many organizations in California have ignored the law, and that many employees are ignorant of their rights to continuation, and do not apply in the requisite number of days. I believe the forms are on the web. In California the information is found at http://www.hmohelp.ca.gov/library/faq/coverage/cal-cobra.asp Finally, outsourcing is usually a business practice intended to increase profits and reduce costs. In charitable organizations, including Yogananda's own SRF before the Wrights, as much was done in house as possible to support the devotees, profit was not an issue, no one was thrown out to save money, in mid depression. (next opinion withdrawn) The terminated employees will undoubtedly see that their sacrifice was for a noble purpose, will conclude that the Matas did the right thing in firing them and making no sacrifices we know of themselves, and so be happy to be out in the cold without benefits at Christmas. A Merry Christmas to all! Edited by: srflongago at: 11/23/02 7:42:12 pm
crogman1 Registered User (11/23/02 3:38 pm) Reply	Re: What happened I feel that SRF as a business certainly has a right to make itself more profitable. As a non-profit with a claimed goal of getting out the message I suppose this applies as well. I am surprised that with the degrading wages SRF paid that they can save much money sending jobs off to non-members. I suspect a darker meaning. I suspect the removal of members from insider positions will reduce the publics awareness of what SRF really is. For those of you who think SRF really is the religion of the future this is probably a good thing? As far as Cobra, SRF has certainly denied this benefit to a large number of people. If they are doing it outside the law I think that would be good to know! Maybe we can do something to help those about to get the axe?
Paramadas Registered User (11/23/02 6:23 pm) Reply	Re: What happened Bro. Vishwananda said that the SRF employee staff would be cut after Christmas due to the recession. He also said that there would be a reorganization, but nothing was said about out-sourcing. If you think about it, the latter does not make logical sense---after all, whom could they find to do the work cheaper than devotee-employees? No, I think the dark implications mentioned in other posts here is off the mark. However, one may rightfully ask why the recession is hitting us so hard when (so I was led to believe) the number of SRF devotees is growing rapidly. Shouldn't that offset the recession (assuming newcomers tithe, which is I think a fair assumption, since newbies are almost always the most enthusiastic)? Perhaps there has been a massive waste of money by SRF which has caused this need for belt-tightening? Personally, I doubt this too, as I have not seen any waste from my position. However, what I have seen is an inefficiency that's enough to tear your hair out, and THAT may amount to the same thing as waste in the long run. Depending on how this reorganization is done, it could be a very good thing for the organization, but the very heart of the inefficiency lies in the fact that too much decision-making power still lies in the hands of a few people at the top who are woefully out of touch. As I have often reminded my superiors, there are only two choices to a leader as his/her organization grows: delegate or divide. If the leaders of SRF don't learn to delegate, then some charismatic monk (with more savvy than Kriyananda) will see that the old organization is no longer serving the people and will create an alternative organization which will make sense to many people, but which will split the Master's work in two (think Martin Luther). Many of us wouldn't want that to happen to SRF, but unless the leaders at the top learn to delegate, the organization will split, sooner or later. So, best of luck Brother Vishwananda, you're gonna need it! Dear fellow Walrusers, griping is OK, but let's pray for Brother's effort give him the requisite hutzbah to get up and do...what needs to be done!
username Registered User (11/23/02 6:53 pm) Reply	Re: What happened Churches are exempt from mandatory State unemployment insurance in california ( it is required in some states for churches to contribute) - Write to Governor Davis, his first post election plan is to assemble the state government to vote in a tax increase for everyone - so lets get them to amend the law and REQUIRE unemployment insurance be paid by churches. I do not know if there is a Cobra exemption for churches. - there might be.
srflongago Registered User (11/23/02 7:36 pm) Reply	Re: What happened The suppression of information supposition you made is much more plausible than mine, I withdraw it. Outsourcing could save very little if people are working at minimum wages. But outsourcing would be a help in maintaining security to use bonded outside firms; no gossip. If there have been more extravagant and silly expenditures of disciples' gifts not contributing to speading the message, such as the lawsuit and the accounting software, it is best for those who are responsible to close down as many leads as they can.
TheHolySinner Registered User (11/23/02 8:04 pm) Reply	Paramadas Paramadas, You said that, "the number of SRF devotees is growing" I thought it was shrinking by the low attendance I've seen at Fullerton and Lake Shrine. Because of the lawsuit and Walrus making people aware, also the low attendance at convocation. Down sizing would imply less money coming in. Where do you get your information? It sounds as though you work at MC and have an inside track... Do tell I found Vishwananda peculiar (to put it politely) at last years convocation, I guess you have seen another side of him?
crogman1 Registered User (11/24/02 3:31 am) Reply	Re: Paramadas It is interesting that we are getting so many stories out of what was said at these meetings by Vishwa. There were several meetings, maybe five in all. In at least one of them he pointed to expensive mistakes by management in the last few years which have lead to serious financial problems. Remember that SRF is very slow to make any decisions at all, especially difficult ones. For them to make the effort to lay people off means something serious is going on. Vishwa also mentioned SRF’s over hiring the last few years. People inside know there has been an explosion of hiring in the last 6 years or so. There have been new office buildings and a lot of growth in employees. It has been well documented that there was little or no actual growth in that time. There have been new members, sometimes at 50/week if you look at lesson applications. However just as many or more have also walked away from SRF. There are statistics in the Walrus library here somewhere about magazine subscriptions and other membership indicators. You doubt outsourcing? That depends I suppose on what you mean. SRF has had a soft rule for years that members not be hired in certain areas. These include areas dealing with money, the office of the president, and more recently the legal areas. These were considered too sensitive to allow the curious SRF membership to be involved in. Cult cult cult cult. This is not specifically outsourcing but it is steering jobs away from SRF members. I consider this “dark” reasoning and worse than outsourcing! There has also been real outsourcing. For years they have taken work from the publications area and sent it outside. The SRF award winning calendar was an example. SRF does the design work and someone else prints it. This is also true of the printing of all the books. They pay the membership at the printing department peanuts but still consultants have recommended for years that work be sent outside. In most companies this would make sense but SRF’s costs are pretty low. Alas no serious research is done behind these important decisions. In the computer department they also outsourced all the work dealing with the financial area. This is the now famous peoplesoft accounting software project known to Walrus readers. This was the $12 million dollar mistake that they hired outside people to support years ago for security reasons. Just recently they completely outsourced it to an outside company to run remotely. I don’t know how many local jobs this will cost but the overall expense to SRF may actually go down with this decision. They were paying excessive salaries to the non-members ($200,000+ per year) to run the system so this may be a short term cost savings. This locks them into a high priced system for years but SRF is not known for its business management decisions! They have also already outsourced some of their order entry and shipping. I have been told that more is on the way. Their order entry and shipping systems are from the dark ages and management has no confidence that they can fix it themselves in their current decimated state. Confidence in internal personnel is a never high at SRF (see the vast Walrus library for examples). Also remember that outsourcing doesn’t have to really save them money for them to run off in that direction. To a large extent SRF is in the hands of outside consultants when it comes to business decisions. If they THINK it will save money or at least make their lives simpler they will and are pursuing it. SRF management is not a group of deep thinking individuals with much common business sense. Look at how they have squandered the SRF fortune and the good will of so many devotees! Consultants now run the entire financial process and have a good deal of influence in many departments including human resources. HR is mostly made up of non-members as well I believe. By the way, SRF members no longer work at minimum wage. They work at minimal wages but not minimum. Salaries in the $10 to $14/hour range are common. People can go for years, some as long as 5 or 6 years, without salary increases even during the boom years. Non-members of course have a more realistic environment.
username Registered User (11/24/02 6:25 am) Reply	Re: Paramadas people soft is not just accounting software. It would be able to handle order entry and shipping. I bet anything that the outside accountants recommended that they do the outsourcing. The outside accountants have new regulations after Enron etc, which prohibits them from doing consulting etc for SEC companies, so the likely way to increase their revenues would be to find a way to bleed their nonprofit clients (they are still allowed to do consulting etc for them). So, SRF again got suckered. One problem for SRF is it will no longer be able to control who has access to the information. The outsourcing firms are not allowed to ask "what religion" people are, it is illegal, so there is a good chance that an SRF member will be seeing the financial information. Anybody know who they outsourced this to?
crogman1 Registered User (11/24/02 8:06 am) Reply	Re: Paramadas You have evidentally read the same sales literature that SRF had on peoplesoft! While it does list order entry and shipping, it is not much like what SRF calls order entry. How about handling donations or signing up for youth program? How about all the automated thank you processing that happens with orders? I have been told they looked at it seriously years ago and found it left out about half of SRF order processing. The shipping problems were similar.
psychdev Registered User (11/24/02 12:06 pm) Reply	Re: Paramadas Let's get our facts straight. The COBRA law is not optional--it's a federal law, not state. It doesn't matter whether the employer is in California or Timbuktoo. Furthermore, the COBRA law has nothing to do with the employer continuing to pay medical premiums. ==> After you leave a company, YOU pay the premiums--both the employee contribution AND the employer side. Therefore SRF cannot deny COBRA benefits. And it would not save SRF money even if they did deny benefits. Therefore, it makes no sense, so far as I understand from the above posting, to say that "SRF cannot pay COBRA benefits." So far as I am aware, the only advantage of the COBRA law is that: 1) if you have a serious medical condition, you will not have to shop for a new (hugely expensive) policy for 18 months or until you get a new job; 2) COBRA rates are group-based rather than individually based, so they MAY be cheaper than buying a new policy--however, insurance companies are free to raise rates for COBRA members as long as they charge the same for all COBRA members for a given company. (But sometimes, these COBRA rates are so high that people simply drop the insurance.) Edited by: psychdev at: 11/24/02 12:08:24 pm
srflongago Registered User (11/24/02 1:10 pm) Reply	Re: Paramadas Thias accords with my experience in my State. The Federal law applies to plans carrying more than 19 employees, which I assume SRF does. The Cal supplement covers those with less. It requires the insurance company to offer coverage with the same cost as the total cost of the group policy for eighteen months. If there are continuing illnesses, large prescription drug costs, the prospect of a serious illness in the near future, it is usually worthwhile to take a loan to get the coverage. For those who find other jobs without health plans, it is also worthwhile if the jobs pay enough. Other people go without.
Lobo Registered User (11/25/02 9:29 pm) Reply	Re: What happened Paramadas, Just what real influence and power does Vishwananda have to change anything. He is not the president. Secondly, SRF has spent millions of our tithes suing Ananda. They recouped $29,000 after 11 years. Maybe they should look into a good legal malpractice lawyer to go after Flynn, et. al. Thank God that the $40 million dollar "project" of the past couple of years was finally stopped. The Board spent thousands of dollars on "consultants" with the Board of Supervisors (in an attempt to obtain their approval for the project); plus after the neighbors put up a strong fight against the project SRF spent over $250 thousand on a Environmental Impact Report, all money wasted. And that's just what has been publicly reported.

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