Stanley, Inc. – the Grinch who stole Christmas

Pay cuts suck big time at any time of the year, but, man, coming at the end-of-year holiday season they are especially hard on folks. So how is it that one of Fortune‘s 100 Best Companies to Work For saw their way to cut the wages of nearly three hundred of its newly-acquired workers by several thousands of dollars just three weeks before Christmas? By unilaterally changing their existing job classifications is how.

Effective tomorrow, December 3, Stanley, Inc., an information technology company listed as the 100th best company to work for on the 2007 Fortune magazine list, is taking over a contract for initial processing of visa applications and citizenship petitions for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Under the outgoing federal contractor’s setup, employees who help do that processing in St. Albans, Vermont and in Laguna Niguel, California were classified as General Clerks I. Under Stanley’s scheme, they will be classified as Data Entry Clerks I or II, and that little slight-of-hand trick results in about a 12% pay cut for many of these workers.

Stanley, whose CEO and Chairman in 2006 raked in a $270,000 salary PLUS a $350,000 bonus (that’s $298 per hour folks), claims it didn’t know what the existing workers’ wages were when it bid on this contract, but that it was committed to giving the government the best value for the money. Stanley, I don’t care how you try to spin this, this is a damn rotten thing for you to do to folks on Christmas Eve.

One of the best companies to work for my ass. Stanley, you’re a miserly Grinch who stole Christmas!!