Cbay systems layed off 32 employees via conference call on 12/21/2007

• Cbay systems layed off 32 employees via conference call on 12/21/2007 - Concerned Citizen
  • Are they deleting information on this topic? - Concerned Citizen
  • Yes. I was one of them fired. sm - Blindy
  • They have a lousy reputation - mt47mtmm
    • I know of two huge accounts local to me - that are very, very unhappy with C-Bay...
      • It wasn't MTs that were let go, it was QA, as that - me

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I'm not a negative person, and I have received high marks with every company I've worked for - including CBay. My opinion on most companies is that one is good for some and not for others. But my experience with CBay was so appalling, that I want to share a word of warning.

CBay has good benefits and they pay for downtime, but the positives stop there and are totally overwhelmed by negatives. The team I was a part of waited for weeks to start our accounts, and we were expected to be patient. Only if you made a point of the fact that you had to leave your other employment to be ready to work for CBay did you receive any compensation. Imagine not being paid for several weeks! Be patient? But that's what happened. Some MTs were paid, and some were not.

And this really paints a picture of the overall working environment. If you were in the know, you could get by a little better than some. For instance, when a virus wiped out the system for about a day, a supervisor said we needed to move our schedules around to compensate. But if you were smart and talked with personel, you learned this was not necessary at all. Downtime should have been paid - period. Some MTs got that downtime and some did not. 

If you are a good MT and pride yourself in your work, you might think you would never get fired, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are very quick to fire people. 

Although my group's part in CBay was very small compared to how enormous the company is, all three supervisors were dishonest in some way, whether it dealt with downtime pay or something else. A couple of us who were better at transcription were often told privileged information and instructed to not tell anyone. Meanwhile, other girls would ask for this information, and the supervisor would say, I don't know. An organization with that type of game playing and dishonesty at the supervisory level should not be on anyone's list as a great place to work.

There is much more I could say, but my hope is to say enough to protect others from making the terrible mistake I did. Sweatshop does not even begin to describe how CBay degrades its MTs. They should truly be ashamed.

I see this company is out of Maryland.  I wondered if anyone has had experience or know anything about the company.

Thanks

We’re so glad that you joined in this afternoon’s conference call announcing the merger between MDI and Transcend Services.  This is an exciting time for all of us, but I know that even good changes can bring about anxiety and I want to assure everyone that we are here to answer your questions to the best of our ability.   

All MDI team members are encouraged to send any questions or concerns you may have that are not addressed in the FAQ sheet you’ve received to TeamMDI@mditrans.com so that we can address these in team conference calls which have been scheduled for Thursday morning (your team lead will provide you with the details).   

Dorothy, Don, and myself, will continue to be available via email to everyone and will respond as quickly as possible to your questions and concerns.  We urge you to utilize the TeamMDI@mditrans.com email address for all your questions so that you can be assured of receiving the most accurate information as soon as possible. 

We look forward to continuing to work with each one of you as we move to the future.    

Thanks,

Carlotta M. Buckley

MDI – Director of Transcription Services

Interesting quote from that press release:

...including the conversion of some of MDI's business to Transcend's speech recognition-enabled BeyondTXT platform,...

My antennas went up right away this morning when the call began.  It was acknowledged that this news must have come as a surprise to us, but when our moderator said it had also come as a surprise to her only a few days prior, my hopes for some honest and forthright information went down the tubes.  It seems to me someone who was moving up in the chain of command would have known what was going on much longer than a couple of days.

I took advantage of emailing one of the team leaders from Transcend last night with some questions about the flexibility of the schedules and shift work, etc., and here is the answer she gave to me: 

We do have shifts instead of line count commitments, but we also never discourage anyone from working extra, and in fact we are always asking for extra help, so that isn’t a problem.   Everyone here logs lines and hours for payroll.   The hours are because if you work overtime we do have to pay that.    We do usually ask that you see if overtime is allowed first, but it’s not that big of a deal because most of the time we are so busy we approve it anyway, so yes if you want to work more you certainly can.     We consider $900.00 gross a pay period fulltime.   We used to count it in lines, but now we have come up with a money amount.    That’s easy to achieve actually, but you don’t have to stop at 900 by any means, it is just minimum to remain fulltime. 

You will see, more often than not, we are begging people to work extra.   We cross train on platforms and most people have primary, secondary, tertiary accounts.   If one isn’t busy another one is.   You will not be constrained on the amount of money you want to make ...

So, if that takes any mud out of the water for you that's good, but it still seems that our flexibility and earning capacity will depend on someone else.  I certainly agree with everyone about the pay scale.  You can't convince me that they have gone through all of these negotiations and pay has never entered into the picture.  I believe it will be just exactly as one caller said this morning, they will attempt to equate the benefits with the pay, so I guess when my power company comes to shut off my electricity I can send them over to Blue Cross/Blue Shield or whoever to get the balance of my money. 

I'm hoping for a recap email regarding the conference call.  In the meantime, anything interesting or noteworthy?  I'm definitely torn on this one, and hoping for some good news.

Thanks

that we would maintain our flexiblity and be able to meet our commitments in a 24-hour window.  Are you saying there are set shifts?  That is huge for me, as I cannot work a set shift around my kids' ever-changing schedules.  Right now we are required to work 2 weekends days per month and we commit to X number of lines per day on the days we schedule ourselves to work.  We were told this flexibility would NOT change.  We also do not request holidays off, but schedule ourselves to work one holiday per year.  We write our own schedules and submit them every 2 months.  The flexibility is the biggest reason I have worked for MDI for years and the only place I wanted to work again after taking a year off to be with a newborn.

I like my current accounts, but am willing to also learn a new platform/account to make sure I have enough work.  But the flexible scheduling is imperative.

Please give me the details.  :)

I'm glad to be working for Webmedx. 

A common enough problem in this industry and one I'm seeing more and more often! For those working for MT companies that require employment status and will not formally temporarily lay you off while there is no work or have too many MTs on the work, then expect you to be on duty by sitting by your computer 24/7 or even 8 hours a day just in case a report comes through: It's illegal to take up your time without compensation.

Example of California's law:  An employee is at work all hours he or she is under their employer's control and cannot engage in private pursuits. A worker who has to wait until they have an assignment is working and must be compensated. Likewise, if an employee is on-call and has restrictions on the use of free time, then that employee should be considered at work.

Check your state laws; most have a similar one. They must either allow you to draw unemployment or pay for your time waiting if they want to keep you or expect you to use your time waiting.

x

Can someone out there with more knowledge please help?

I have Word 2007 and my doucments changed from doc.file to docx.files and I have no idea why. I have had word since 2007 so this is not new to me.  

I am also unable to email a document from the Word 2007 home page. I have run a Word diagnostic and cannot seem to find any problems.

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks!

and was thinking about applying. I worked for them before all the changes happened.

Thanks.

and Microsoft quit selling Word 2003 in June of this year, which means they will quit supporting it soon, too.  I hate to pay $187.00 for an outdated piece of software for working.  I have a new computer and specifically requested Windows XP but did not think about Office 2007 not being usable.

Does anyone who works for Medware care to share their opinion about the company in regards to steady work, flexible schedules, platform, benefits, etc.?  You can e-mail me if you wish.  TIA.