The news always announces pending layoffs

• To the "laidoff" employees - A Californian
  • This law only applies to mass - layoffs. NM
    • Yes - and plant closings. Has to be 33% or more of workforce - plus there are loopholes.
      • Not necessarily - sm - A Californian
        • Nope. Only applies to less than 50 if the number is 33% or more of - workforce.
          • P.S....or if facility is closing and provided that - no loopholes apply!
            • Read 29 USCS 2106 and 20 CFR 639.1- sm - A Californian
  • Here's The Federal Law on Mass Layoff Notice - NightOwl
  • I google federal layoff law. sm - .
  • I knewww I had heard of this law, thanks for post for the MTs - darlene
    • Many MTSOs state right up front - swiftsail
  • 60 day notice .... What?? - Lisa
    • Please DO NOT mislead the MTs in California - Do a thorough research first
      • I am not misleading anyone - Lisa
        • The topic is about "Layoff" - sm - A Californian
  • 60 days notice before a layoff? sm - Huh?????
    • Several years ago, they passed a federal law - NightOwl
    • The news always announces pending layoffs - Have you been watching the news?
    • The major companies in my area - always give 60 days notice.

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Keystrokes has finalized the benefits package for full time employees and has received great feedback from our MTs.

We wanted to share these so that you get them straight from the source rather than in rumors and heresay.

To be FT, you must produce a minimum of 12,000 lines (acute care), 1200 reports (radiology) or a combination of the two.

After 90 days, all FT employees are eligible for:

2 sick days, 2 floating paid holidays, rate x 1.5 for holidays worked, 3 days bereavement pay for immediate family, 1 day bereavement pay for extended family, 401k plan (with vesting schedule for match), health insurance (paid by employee) and life insurance (paid by company), direct deposit.

After one year, FT employees are eligible for 5 days PTO.  After three years, FT employees are eligible for 10 days PTO and after ten years, FT employees are eligible for 15 days PTO.

After years of changes due to growth, we have deemed 2006 a change-free year and have put in place many surprise perks for our MTs for this coming year. 

We value our transcriptionists - both employees and ICs and want to make Keystrokes the employer of choice. 

Give us a look ... you will like what you see.  No more awkward growing pains; instead you will be treated with the professional respect you deserve while enjoying a personal touch!

Thank you to all who have helped mold the company into what it is today - we could not do it without the support of our transcriptionists, customers and supporters.  We even thank the critics - their criticism allows us to improve :)

Happy Holidays !

I didn't even get the invite to the conference call.  I was working one day and started getting an error message that my account number was inactive.  Through a series of emails and phone calls, I found out I had been laid off!  Thanks a lot!  I just found another job working as an IC.  I think I'll be much happier! 

First of all, I would like to say that I sympathsize wtih those that were laid off at Heartland, however, I believe that that there were probably indications that this was going to happen, I for one, remember seeing a LOT of job ads for Heartland and they suddenly stopped on the 2 major transcription job boards. For me, that was an indication that something was going down the tube.

I also do not agree wtih offshoring, but when I read the posts on this board, I see one theme over and over; that being laziness in general. I see posts where people gripe and complain about having to work weekends or nights or whatever and wanting to get paid decent money, but they want to only be able to work 8-5 Monday through Friday.  I have been in this field for over 20 years and I believe that I have always pulled my fair share.  I have seen it in the company that I work for now, and the work load goes up dramatically on the weekends, because NOBODY wants to work and as we all know, medical transcription, for the most part, is a profession that is 24/7.

Sadly to say, our society has become one, where we expect to have something for nothing. Meaning that we want the nice thinngs, but we don't have to break our necks for it.  I hear of friends who are giving their kids brand-new to almost brand-new cars in high school.  Heck, when I was growing up, if I wanted contacts, or a car, or clothes, I had to detassel corn or work in a fast food place to get the money to be able to have those things.  I don't see that happening now, and in essence, that is why so many of our jobs have been offshored.  Its not only a cheaper labor cost, but most of these people in general have a better work ethic.

My company takes pride in the fact that it doesn't offshore and it will be a cold day in a very warm place before they do.

My only advice to those that were laid off is to hang in there, send out the resumes and hopefully, you will be able to find a new company that will treat you like an employee and not a number.

Some people seem to be missing the point here -- I also do QA as well as medical transcription and I generally am working MANY hours a day and usually 6-7 days a week, because I know budget-wise what it takes for me to surviive. 

As a QA person, I see a quality of work that is totally unacceptable and it is from American medical transcriptionists.  I read about people saying they can do X number of lines in an hour, or that they type X number of words a minute and as a QA person, that is usually the persons report that has 10 or more blanks in it, because UNFORTUNATELY they are more concerned about production than they are quality. 

I sometimes wonder how many medical transcriptionists go back and re-listen to a report they have typed and then are able to figure out what the doctors are saying?

I have worked both inhouse and from home and I really have to agree that if someone TRULY wants to get started in this field, then they should work onsite first to truly get a grasp at what medical transcription entails.

There ARE people who are medcal transcriptionists who DO work long and hard hours and ARE getting shafted by the companies they work for, but quite frankly, I am tired of the ones who have toddlers and small children at home and whine about how they can do this work and take care of their kids too  -- just because you work at home, dosen't mean that your children can be underfoot all the time and it is also learning about priorities as well.  If you were working on the outside, you would NOT be allowed to take a huge amount of time off for kid activities or family activities, so the MTSOs do have legitimate gripes when it comes to employees not working when they say they will or keeping to a schedule, and this is where I am coming full circle when I talk about a work ethiic  -- it has slowly and steadily been disappearing over the years.

Where's everyone planning to go now that Cbay has laid off the rest of the editors?

While there are many employees in all areas who fit the poor work ethic you describe, it is by no means anything but a lame excuse for greedy corporations to do what they would have done anyway.  It goes along with the jobs Americans won't do we hear so much about these days.

I do think the handwriting has been on the wall about Heartland.....er...I mean HEARTLESS for some time.  I personally don't and never have worked for them but I've been hearing for a year or so that their ultimate goal was to do exactly what they just did.  Still one can hardly blame those who chose to stay and watch the ship go down, it isn't like HEARTLESS doesn't have lots of company these days.  I believe I actually read somewhere that companies are rewarded tax-wise for shipping jobs overseas.

Now is the time for all MTs to prepare for the future, although I have no clue as to what career or occupation would immunize employees from the exact same thing that just happened at HEARTLESS.  A casual observer can see the increase in the number of job postings for VR editors so the next step will be unless we are willing to spend all day every day transcribing impossible ESLs, mushmouths, Speedy Gonzales and all their kin, MT is going to be gone.

There is also something to be said for the way MTs in most, if not all, companies are treated.  Here we have QA people who search for MINUTE things or even WRONG things to correct so they can meet their quota or whatever they are evaluated on.  Why, I even had one QA person correct Tessalon Perles that I had transcribed to Tessalon Pearls.  Cold hard fact of life is the suits at the corporations care nothing about quality, they just make a show by saying they have QA people to ensure quality.  HA!  The hospitals care nothing about quality, only the bottom line.  The physicians (most) care nothing about quality, only their insurance reimbursement.  So there you have it, a grim future for all of us.

Lastly, anyone who falls into the jobs Americans won't do and offshoring is necessary because there aren't enough qualified Americans, is nothing short of a fool.  What they mean is Americans can't and won't work for less than it takes to maintain a decent standard of living and the cost of living in the good ole U.S. of A is not cheap.

I have nothing to offer the employees of HEARTLESS other than that my heart aches for them and their plight and I pray each and every one will be able to find a decent place to work in the short term and that they will be looking to see how they will survive in the long term.

GOD BLESS ALL YOU EMPLOYEES OF HEARTLESS, INC.

I worked there.  The manager is extremely nice in the beginning and then is really mean and rude after you've been there awhile.  I would never consider working for her again even if she paid .15 a line.  It's just not worth it to me.

Feel free to do a search on this board.   I thought maybe things had gotten better, but there are others who had the same experience with them.

Good luck!

I would never bite the  hand that feeds me or bad-mouth a company I worked for.  Since I have been gone from TT now for a year, I feel  no obligation whatsoever.  I did a lot of research before I quit and my conclusion was/is that TT is just a drop off station for Dictaphone.  I did research on my 2 primaries (lost) and found that both dried up when they fully implemented Dictaphone VR.  I further concluded that the hospitals switch over to a very few in-house MT editors and poof, all TT gets is overflow.   I seriously doubt that they have many, if any, contracts of their own.  Obviously things have gotten worse since I quit so why would anyone expect it will improve?  I think not.

The TT management person I was so proud of, I am now not so proud of anymore.  I don't know what happened to her.  The person I have known so long didn't have it in her to be be less than straight forward.  She did, before I quit, even learn to  hit the ignore button on my emails.  This hurt me tremendously!   Didn't even reply to my letter of resignation.  Thus...I highly doubt that any of you who claim to be in the know know anything at all unless you are part of the management team or have done a lot of research and if you've done your research, you know it ain't good..

Don't worry, I don't have to sign my name, TT management, when they read this, will know exactly who I am.