Thursday, May 10, 2007

News Flash: Florida Is Not California

For many years, First NLC has cut corners by allocating California resources to Florida cost centers. Several employees who work and pay taxes in California are considered Florida workers. This benefits First NLC because Florida has much cheaper and management-friendly labor laws.

I've overheard conversations and phone calls detailing how west coast employees were confused about certain corporate policies that conflicted with their state's labor laws. Things like not being able to roll over unused vacation time into the next calendar year are totally illegal in California, but they are par for the course in Deerfield. It wasn't until January that First NLC finally issued a California-specific policies document, but I've been told it doesn't address any labor issues that would be in the employee's favor.

Why am I telling all of you this? I just found out that some employees who were let go a few weeks ago are unable to collect unemployment benefits in California because, according to their state's records, they were employees of Florida. Imagine getting laid off and not even being eligible for unemployment just because some bean-counting weasels wanted to save a few bucks by classifying you as a worker in another state! Legal? Methinks not, but legalities don't seem to stop our organization.

Let this be a warning to all of you who are still employed out there on the west coast: find out what cost center your wages are being reported from. At First NLC, "doing what is required" means screwing over everybody who stands in the way of making the execs' bank accounts grow.

3 comments:

Brett said...

What a great BLOG! I hope you keep up the good work. This companay, by far, was one of the worst companies to work for. I spent 2 years there in the Wholesale capacity, and all my brokers hated dealing with First NLC, hence the name the broker community bestowed upon it, WORST NLC. Don't let the Mafia family in Deerfield get you down!

Jillayne Schlicke said...

Thank you for blogging about your experiences. I will be a regular reader.

Jillayne Schlicke said...

Hi former NLC employee, I am going to send you some traffic soon from raincityguide.com

My name is Jillayne Schlicke. I run the Ethical Lending Foundation and I believe in what you are doing: Sharing the way you were treated with the world.