Employers Maintaining Vigilance in the Face of Layoff Rage
By EVE TAHMINCIOGLU
The New York Times on-line August 1, 2001
Juval Aviv, a private investigator in New York, had lunch in April with a
man he suspected of sabotaging one of his client's computer systems,
causing up to $20 million in damage and indefinitely delaying a
long-planned public stock offering.
Mr. Aviv, whose client was a New Jersey chemical company, told the man,
the company's former manager of information- management systems, that all
the evidence pointed to him and that he was there to help him make things
right. After a few hours and many cups of coffee, the 56-year-old former
employee, whose name Mr. Aviv would not disclose to protect the identity
of the company, confessed his guilt.
The man was one of 50 people laid off from the company in February, and
he had known another executive's computer password and had used it after
he lost his job to tap into the company's computer system from home and
delete critical inventory and personnel files, Mr. Aviv said.
What caused this company veteran, who had been making $186,000 a year and
who had a wife and three children, to crack? An anonymous note that he
wrote to the president of the concern before he was caught sheds some
light on his motive. "I have been loyal to the company in good and
bad times for over 30 years," he wrote. "I was expecting a
member of top management to come down from his ivory tower to face us
with the layoff announcement, rather than sending the kitchen supervisor
with guards to escort us off the premises like criminals. You will pay
for your senseless behavior."
As the economy continues to stagnate and layoffs proliferate, workplace
experts say, it is becoming more important than ever for employers to
display vigilance against possible retaliation by the people they are
letting go.
For one thing, workers seem to be angrier these days when the ax falls,
said Beverly Smallwood, a Mississippi psychologist who does workplace
consulting for businesses. Many workers have put in endless hours and
sweat for the promise of hefty stock options that never materialized.
"I don't recall at any time in my history, and I've been in this for
30 years, where the degree of destruction was quite as high," said
Linn A. Hynds, a Detroit employment lawyer. Since December, he has
advised companies in 10 factory and office closings and layoffs involving
1,500 workers in southeastern Michigan.
At the same time, the people doing the dismissals at many companies —
especially dot-coms — are younger and more inexperienced than their
predecessors in the last big layoff binge of the early 1990's. In their
overzealousness, some of them make the mistake of bringing in security
guards in inappropriate settings, increasing the victims' resentment and
making retribution more likely.
The New Jersey chemical company committed two classic faux pas in handing
out its pink slips, in the view of Mr. Aviv, who is president and chief
executive of Interfor Inc., a private investigation firm. First, it was
unduly harsh toward a high - level executive who was accustomed to being
coddled and who was familiar with the ins and outs of its computer
network. And second, it failed to maintain a backup filing system to
protect its crucial documents against sabotage.
The worker was arrested and is out on bail, but may avoid jail time, he
said, because the company does not want to look stupid and is considering
settling the case to hush up the matter.
Two of the most common acts of revenge are theft of company property and
breaches in the company's computer network, according to an annual survey
of Fortune 1000 companies by Pinkerton Inc., the Chicago security firm.
Ray O'Hara, Pinkerton's vice president for the Western region, estimates
that employee retaliation occurs in only 1 percent of dismissals, but
could be as high as 5 percent at companies that do not handle layoffs
well or that have a hostile corporate culture.
The electronic workplace, while making businesses more productive, has
also created a situation that enables employees to bring a company to its
knees with just a few keystrokes.
That reality was brought home five years ago when Timothy A. Lloyd, a
computer programmer, was accused of hiding a software "time
bomb" to delete critical files in his company's computer system
after being fired. The case, which is still making its way through the
courts, involved Omega Engineering Inc., a temperature components maker
in Bridgeport, N.J., which asserts that the damage could eventually cost
it $10 million in sales and contracts. Mr. Lloyd has denied any
wrongdoing.
Moreover, with the growth in telecommuting and the spread of
Internet-capable hand-held devices, it has become easier for dismissed
workers to wreak havoc outside the company premises. Companies are also
beginning to install wireless networks in offices and factories that go
through walls and have a range of 300 feet. That means employees can
potentially tap into company databases via a laptop computer from right
outside their former workplaces.
As a result, security experts suggest cutting off employees' connections
to the corporate networks before letting the employees go.
"Every new wave of technology introduces new security
exposures," said Richard Hunter, managing vice president at Gartner
Inc. (news/quote), a research firm. "Clamp down and take away pass
codes," he advised. "If people who have a reason to be upset
have access to your system, then they have the means. The remaining
question is: Do they have the motivation?"
A disgruntled employee at an East Coast service company certainly did,
according to Jay Ehrenreich, a senior manager for the cybercrime unit of
PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York. The employee figured out how to alter
product prices on the company's Web site and fouled up a month of bills,
Mr. Ehrenreich said.
The sabotage, which occurred during a company reorganization and caused
hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, was never linked to a
specific employee because the process for assigning identification
numbers for access to the network was so "messed up" the worker
was able to obtain a bunch of ID's and hide his or her identity, he said.
The company called in Mr. Ehrenreich to fix the problem.
Even if they are cut off from the company's computers, disgruntled
workers have found that the Internet makes it easy to take their
frustration out by spreading false information in chat rooms or sending
out fake news releases. And they can always engage in the low-tech
practice of just bad-mouthing their former employer — and there is not
much a company can do about that.
Amazon.com (news/quote) tried to convince 1,300 of the workers it laid
off this year to sign an agreement that included a clause to not
disparage the company in return for more lucrative severance deals, but
backed off from enforcing the clause under pressure from union organizers
and also fear of a public reaction.
Old-fashioned theft also remains a staple of worker retaliation. The
average company loses approximately 6 percent of its gross revenue to
employee fraud and abuse, according to the Association of Certified Fraud
Examiners in Austin, Tex.
"We classify it as ex-rage," said Daniel D. Thaxton, manager
for document security at Standard Register, a maker of business forms in
Dayton, Ohio. One common blunder is to leave open boxes of company checks
in unsecured rooms, he said.
But with computers infiltrating every corner of businesses today, from
the head offices to the manufacturing floor, even blue-collar workers are
potential cybersaboteurs, Mr. Thaxton says. For example, he says, an
angry assembly line worker can now sabotage a computer system, bringing
down an entire line.
"While some people on the floor are much more likely to take a
hammer to a piece of machinery, we have had people reprogram systems and
mess the manufacturing processes up," he said. "Most of the
cases we have seen involved robotic equipment, such as a robotic
arm."
Often it takes two to three days to figure out what is wrong with such a
system, Mr. Thaxton said, and in the age of just-in-time manufacturing,
that can mean the loss of contracts.
In another example of employee mischief, Mr. Hynds, the Detroit lawyer,
says he knows of several cases in which fired workers have stuffed their
office computer in the cardboard box they are given for personal
belongings and have tried to walk out with it.
Sometimes, they were merely trying to protect their private files, not
steal company secrets, he says, as in the case of a married company vice
president who tried to spirit out his computer because it contained love
letters to and from his girlfriend. But the fact remains that former
employees can end up with valuable company information at their disposal.
To avoid that, he suggests letting dismissed workers download or erase
personal files under strict company supervision.
It is not just the laid-off workers who pose a threat. Employees who
survive a layoff can also vandalize company property to avenge their
departed co-workers.
Arthur May, operations manager at the Kimberly-Clark (news/quote) mill in
Hendersonville, N.C., recalled a time at another paper plant that a
wrench jammed a machine and shut it down. "When people feel they've
been dealt with unfairly, `ghost' things just start to happen," he
said. To be sure, most employees are honest and tales of sour-grapes
subversion can be overblown. Jonathan L. Alpert, a labor lawyer in Tampa,
Fla., who represents workers, said dismissed employees could be easy
scapegoats to blame for run-of-the- mill computer problems or even
management missteps.
Most dismissed workers "are shell-shocked," Mr. Alpert said.
"Their main concern," he added, "is figuring out how to
get their lives together, not masterminding some sort of
retaliation."
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