A Bangor dental clinic serving reduced-income clients has begun to retain the services of right after firing about 50 percent of its personnel last month, but it is continue to not very clear if it will give all the expert services that it did before the abrupt go.
Penobscot Neighborhood Health and fitness Care’s dental clinic laid off 31 of 65 staff in November, including dentists, dental assistants, hygienists and experts, as portion of what it named a restructuring effort and hard work. The nonprofit clinic has because hired 11 new staffers and a total-time trainer for dental assistants, said spokesperson Kate Carlisle.
The move arrived as a shock to observers amid a pandemic worker lack. Information of the restructuring are continue to scant, which include how lots of a lot more the clinic will hire or regardless of whether it will drop products and services completely. Former personnel also mentioned they have been barred from talking publicly about the layoffs under a severance agreement with the clinic.
PCHC is one of four lower-price dental treatment providers in Penobscot County, and the only in Bangor that accepts MaineCare, the state’s model of Medicaid. A person previous dental resident, Dr. Valuable Bieni, mentioned the clinic experienced talked over restructuring in her very last semester, but the layoffs took her by surprise immediately after she concluded function there in July.
“My impact through my time there was that they were trying to expand the clinic and increase the dental therapist plan,” she reported.
A few laid-off personnel spoke to the Bangor Daily Information on affliction of anonymity because they experienced to signal nondisclosure agreements in exchange for two weeks’ severance spend. Carlisle declined to confirm whether any of the 31 laid-off personnel had been specified severance or necessary to sign nondisclosure agreements, declaring the nonprofit typically involves severance that relies upon on yrs of services and other things.
Carlisle also formerly declined to provide particulars about what the restructuring approach entailed, nor how quite a few previous PCHC dental workers could anticipate to be rehired for new roles. She did not say whether or not some dental expert services have been being eliminated.
The three personnel explained that they and their laid-off colleagues were being educated of the downsizing in the course of a meeting with management, wherever they had been advised the clinic was restructuring and that they were currently being fired.
PCHC stated at the time of the layoffs that personnel would be invited to use for “newly redefined service provider roles,” but one worker reported she didn’t see a task listing for her previous purpose until eventually previous 7 days right after she experienced by now secured a new career. Yet another laid-off staffer who claimed she had been at PCHC for far more than a 10 years reapplied for her aged career but was rejected.
Nondisclosure agreements in these settings are uncommon but not exceptional, said John Gale, a University of Southern Maine researcher and president of the Nationwide Rural Health and fitness Affiliation. Corporations generally involve them to guard proprietary info, but now often count on them to defend reputations in the age of social media, Gale mentioned.
“I don’t know what people staff members would know that would hurt their small business product,” Gale stated. “I assume it is a very little like blackmail to a specific extent, [to say], ‘We laid you off. we’re gonna give you two weeks severance, but we want non-disclosure agreements’.”
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