Two months have passed since the 425 employees at Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. were told they could lose their jobs under a management cost-cutting reorganization plan.

And they won’t find out for at least another month whether they’re still employed.

Should employees have to wait three months with the anxiety of not knowing before being told if they are the victims of a corporate downsizing?

According to one national business management coach based in Camden, Bangor Hydro executives are treating employees “in a horrible way” by not telling them up front whether they have a future with the company.

“Unless there’s something legal here that I don’t understand, this is downright cruel,” said Jim Povec, founder of ImproveNow.com. “I don’t see the benefit in not telling them.”

But according to a state Department of Labor official who counsels displaced workers, Bangor Hydro is handling the layoffs the same way as just about every other company has before it has tackled layoffs. Union contracts are being honored and time is being given for people to review early retirement packages.

“It does take a while in big union operations,” said Ron Brodeur, a manager of the state labor department’s rapid response team. “There’s a lot of negotiations about whose going to be laid off, bumping rights and things like that.”

Regardless, anxiety levels currently are so high in the company’s offices throughout eastern and coastal Maine that one Bangor counselor said he “suspects there’s not a lot of work getting done right now.”

Bangor Hydro’s outgoing president, Carroll Lee, acknowledged last week that there is a tense atmosphere in the downtown Bangor business offices, in the garages on Main Street, and in the facilities in outlying towns.

“People obviously are upset with the company downsizing,” said Lee, who is accepting an executive retirement package and is leaving by the beginning of summer.

Layoffs pending

In late February, Lee announced that Bangor Hydro’s staff would be cut as part of a 20 percent cost-cutting plan, but it wasn’t until late March that workers were notified about how drastic the job cuts would be.

Lee’s announcement came about a month after the Maine Public Utilities Commission considered an independent audit of Bangor Hydro because the utility asked for its sixth rate increase in six years.

Bangor Hydro withdrew its $6.4 million rate increase request when it publicized the upcoming reorganization. Utility officials said the restructuring was taking place because that’s a standard business practice after one company is purchased by another. Emera Inc. of Nova Scotia bought Bangor Hydro for $206 million in October.

How company officials manage a layoff is a demonstration of how responsible they are to employees, the workers’ families and the communities they serve, according to Povec, adding, it’s a “moment of truth” for executives.

“It’s a time when their real mettle rises to the job,” Povec said. “They’re judged by everybody on how they handle it.”

At this point, all that the workers have been told is that a restructured Bangor Hydro will employ at least 210 people. No one personally has been informed that they will be unemployed in the next couple of months.

The workers, however, have been shown a facsimile of an organizational chart that lists the titles and the number of positions in all but one of the utility’s four divisions. The workers have looked at the charts to see if their jobs are on it and many have noticed that their positions are not listed.

They also know from e-mails and news reports that 79 union jobs will be cut and that 71 people have been offered early retirement packages. Emera will be forming a subsidiary called Bangor Line that could employ up to 50 of Bangor Hydro’s union workers.

The business services division, which currently has 70 employees, is the sole department that doesn’t know how it will be affected by the reorganization.

Having to go through months of not knowing whether they’ll have a job could produce a level of distrust among the employees who are spared the ax, Povec said.

“The ones that are staying have been abused,” he said. “When all gets said and done the morale level is going to be low. They won’t be able to trust management for years.”

Evaluation

For a company to maintain a level of credibility not just with employees but also in the community it serves, the firm must undertake layoffs and cost cuts with efficiency, Povec said. Observers could understand if market conditions or the loss of major customers were the justifications for a company to restructure, he said.

But the company’s executives must make the cuts “swiftly and not over months,” Povec said.

“All of that should be expressed by the chief executive officer and to as many people personally as possible,” he said.

Lee said last week that market conditions were the reasons for the last rate-increase request. In the last two years, Bangor Hydro has lost four of its biggest customers, including the HoltraChem Manufacturing plant in Orrington, which was the largest consumer of electricity in the state.

“We didn’t predict that four of our largest customers would have shut down,” Lee said.

Brodeur, of the state’s rapid response team, said he is more than aware of how market conditions trigger job cuts. Company officials call the rapid response team once they know who is going to be laid off so that those workers can be educated on job retraining or other unemployment benefits.

Brodeur said the rapid response team is on hold to help Bangor Hydro employees until the company actually knows who will lose their jobs. Union contracts stipulate that workers must be given 90 days’ notice that layoffs are forthcoming and other employees must be given time to review early retirement packages, he said.

“We’re prepared to work with them, but they’re still out there with what their numbers are going to be,” he said. Brodeur also explained that there is some negotiating going on between the company and union over seniority, bumping rights and other union-related issues.

David Bofinger, spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the union and Bangor Hydro have not conducted any formal talks in the last couple of weeks. But, he said, the utility is honoring its contract with the union.

“I think they’re doing what they have to do under the contract,” he said.

Emera spokeswoman Alison Gillan said last week that both Emera and Bangor Hydro officials are trying to be receptive to employees’ concerns.

“We’re well aware of the impact and the uncertainty that this is causing for employees and their families,” she said. “The two relationships that are the most important to us are the relationship with our customers and the relationship with our employees. We’re working hard on both.”

Dealing with uncertainty

Although Bangor Hydro may be honoring contracts before telling workers whether they will have a job, that is little consolation for the employees who are wondering whether they still may be employed in the next couple of months.

“They’re all sitting on the edge of their chairs right now wondering if it’s going to be them and they’re not wanting it to be them,” said Brodeur, who has recently job-counseled laid-off workers at shoe manufacturing companies and paper mills. “It’s really tricky. There’s a lot of mental games people play with themselves.”

“It sounds like a terrible situation,” said William Donahue, a counselor with Behavioral Health Center in Bangor.

Donahue said the high anxiety levels the employees are experiencing come from a fear of the unknown.

“That increases a sense of powerlessness,” he said. “They should do anything they can to give themselves a sense of control in their lives.”

The key to surviving pending layoffs is to avoid “catastrophic thinking,” he said.

Donahue said he suggests workers regain control in their lives by examining their employment possibilities. That includes working on their resumes or surveying the employment landscape. But workers shouldn’t start thinking that they’re not going to survive or that they’re going to end up financially bankrupt, he said.

“Many people have survived very stressful things in the past, such as death, divorce and even unemployment,” Donahue said. “Their survival is possible.”