Alert the media! It's Katie's first blog post!

So, now that this blog has aged like a fine wine, I figured it was time for me to actually post on here. Zach has been amazing at keeping everyone in the loop, muuuuuuch better than I could ever do (obviously!). Given that my work environment is currently in in state of upheaval, I thought that would make an exciting first post!
So, here we go! I apologize in advance for the length & the rambling tone!

Zach mentioned in a previous post that all of the temporary people in my department were being let go, for cost-cutting reasons, and that by the end of February, all temps employed by all NYK offices in North American would be gone. We just found out on Monday that the final day had been pushed up, and that all temps will in fact be gone by this Friday! This will be a huge blow to our department, since it's basically 50% temps, 50% full time employees...by Monday morning, 8 people will be doing the work of 16. The idea of this is a tiny bit more manageable right now, given the fact that the shipping industry is quite slow, and our workload has decreased considerably over the last couple of months, but when the volume picks up again, this could prove problematic!

As background, and in seemingly unrelated news, our department has had 5 extra bodies helping us with our workload since October, in the form of NYK employees from our office in Manila, Phillipines. When they arrived, we were simply told that they would be helping us with production, since, at the time, we were slammed with work, and it was cheaper to bring employees from overseas to stay in hotels than it was to hire more temps locally. More on this development shortly...

Yesterday (Tuesday) the full-timers were pulled into a meeting with our management team & their boss. We were told that, due to the state of the economy, NYK would be outsourcing the documentation process (document creation & rate application) to the Manila Documentation team...some of whom have been helping us out since October. Additionally, the Regional Documentation offices in Chicago & Vancouver will be closing in May, leaving the Boise Documentation center (or centre, for our Canadian readers!) and the Toronto Documentation centre as the only Doc centers in North America. Apparently NYK is the last carrier (shipping company) to outsource the Documentation aspect of the process. Our job descriptions will be changing completely, and my understanding is that our main purpose will be liasing between the customers and the Manila Doc team.

So, the times, they are a-changing! This is the 2nd job I have had where my job has been outsources (when we lived in Tumwater, the medical billing company I worked for outsourced my job to India). I have definitely been lucky, since I haven't actually lost my job either time, I've just been "repositioned" to something different. In this particular situation, the outsourcers are at least of the same company, and are used to working with the same programs and procedures...hopefully this will make the transition a little smoother than Zach's experience with Micron.

I have yet to be told exactly what my new position will be, and will update when I find out. It's been a crazy couple of days, and I'm sure the next couple of months will be interesting (to say the least), but I'm just glad to be able to say that I have a job. In this economy, that's definitely something to be very thankful for! As Zach said, when I told him of the latest developments, "I guess we're the new American model - a two income household with both jobs having been outsourced in the span of a year". Sad but true...and like I said, at least we've both been lucky enough to keep our jobs (or find new, better ones, in Zach's case).

Well, after that lovely, uplifting blog post, I'm sure you'd all like me to never post again! My apologies for the length of the post...I'm not known for my conciseness! I will try very hard to be a more active blogger & help keep everyone informed.

I think that's about all the news to report from here!
Love,
Katie