So it Begins: Great Salt Lake Council lays off 21 employees

[walk in the woods]

This story just popped up on my news feed.

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The Boy Scouts of America in northern Utah has laid off 21 employees, a move that was bound to happen after its largest sponsor — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — decided to sever centurylong ties to the national organization.

“This is a difficult decision,” Kent Downing, interim Scout executive for the Great Salt Lake Council, wrote in a letter posted on its website. “We wish our former colleagues the best as they transition to new employment, and we have offered them severance packages to support them at this time.”

Before the layoffs, some long-tenured employees were given incentives to retire.

 

[carebear3895]

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/09/05/utah-boy-scouts-lay-off/

Edited September 5, 2019 by carebear3895

[RememberSchiff]

Moderator note: Merged into one topic,  sltrib.com story link requires paid subscription. 

RS

 

Edited September 6, 2019 by RememberSchiff
spelling

[malraux]

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In 2018, the organization began allowing girls to join the previously all-male Cub Scouts, for children in kindergarten through fifth grade. At that time about 20 girls joined Cubs in the Salt Lake Valley.

That's surprisingly few. In just my pack alone we are closing in on that number. On the larger point, its unfortunate but not surprising. How many employees total did the council have?

[5yearscouter]

Grand Canyon council had already started laying off the council office employees months ago

[T2Eagle]

In my opinion, one of the more distasteful aspects of BSA management, which I think comes in part from having an insular hiring and promotion policy that means everyone in the organization has essentially grown up knowing no other culture, is that they are compelled to spin everything as if they have it all under control.  In this case:  "As part of our regular evaluation of our needs and resources" and  "it is partly based on the recent decision."  Neither of those statements is remotely true. Nothing about this is part of anything regular, and the need to layoff thirteen people is entirely based on the decision by the church to separate.  I am baffled by the inability to simply be transparent and candid. 

[carebear3895]

90% of their council is LDS? Sorry, but no sympathy for those guys. They've been riding easy streak their whole careers. 

[MattR]

Well, I'll give them credit for reducing costs. We will have lost something like 40% after all is done in our district over a few years and the council is frozen into inaction.

[Cburkhardt]

The public position of the LDS Church did not identify the allowing our gay/lesbian/transgendered members (they have always belonged) to disclose their status as the reason for the mass departure.  It further has not stated that our welcoming of all-girl Cub Dens and Scouts BSA Troops would have caused them to depart had this occurred before they made their departure announcement.  I regard the departure of our LDS friends as unfortunate and regret knowing there is unavoidable economic disruption for those families of former BSA professionals.  However, like any other national leadership of Chartered Organizations it was their right to do so and I wish them well.  If you want to use our camps and if some of your children want to participate in our program, you already know you will be warmly welcomed. 

What is regretful is that there are many who regard the BSA as an organization that should conform its national program in a manner to express a more-specific political, social, religious or other point of view.  A large bulk of public commenters on these issues over the past 5 years were not even members of BSA programs.  Well-informed or not, that so many argue so loudly about the BSA is proof by itself that we do important work on a large scale -- we count in American society. 

The BSA would never be able to conform to so many specific views.  Rather, in our increasingly-fracturing society groups of large organization membership are encouraged to break-away into smaller focused groups of similarly-minded people.  When this happens our country loses capability to bring together people with varying points of view -- sometimes views that are not capable of resolution -- so we can glue together as a free society.  The far right, far left and groups with focused expectations have attacked the BSA incessantly and hope for our demise, but I predict we will be around as a vital organization because what we do is important, unifying and building. 

We have to take one more action (the financial restructuring/bankruptcy) to provide some justice to members damaged in the BSA's past, after which we will no longer function as a cultural or legal punching bag.  I look forward to the aftermath when we can confidently look to the future and breath freely. 

Our long process of eliminating exclusionary practices, implementing fortress youth protection and restructuring financially will combine to be one of the finest organizational work-outs in US history.  I wish our LDS brothers could be there in large numbers to help see this though, keep American youth and society firmly united and benefit from the outcomes with us.

 

 

 

 

 

[scotteg83]

I don't even think our council has 21paid employees to let go.

 

But LDS is not a big group in my half of Maine.

[Hawkwin]

On ‎9‎/‎5‎/‎2019 at 8:32 PM, malraux said:

In 2018, the organization began allowing girls to join the previously all-male Cub Scouts, for children in kindergarten through fifth grade. At that time about 20 girls joined Cubs in the Salt Lake Valley.

Keep in mind that in 2018 (and probably at the time this article was referencing), just the early adopter program was up and running in the beginning. My daughter was the ONLY cub in our entire district to my knowledge - and we had to go to a different district to find a single pack that was even participating in the program at that time (we had none in our district) - and oddly enough, one of our three was an LDS girl from yet ANOTHER district.

[John-in-KC]

one Thing the story doesn’t tell us is how many are professional service, and how many are admin employees. 

[carebear3895]

59 minutes ago, John-in-KC said:

one Thing the story doesn’t tell us is how many are professional service, and how many are admin employees. 

I'd be willing to bet alot of the western region DE's are LDS. There's a reason we call BYU the DE School....they pump out professionals. 

[Eagle94-A1]

1 hour ago, carebear3895 said:

I'd be willing to bet alot of the western region DE's are LDS. There's a reason we call BYU the DE School....they pump out professionals. 

BYU has a offers a minor in Nonprofit Management that was specifically designed to produce DEs. One of the guys in my PDL-1 class went there.

 

[The Latin Scot]

This is correct; in fact when I was attending BYU only a few years ago I had a few friends who were Scouting majors. It was tied to the Recreational Management degree, which covered everything from business management to recreational facilities development. A pretty cool major actually; I considered it for a while before I decided I wanted to stick with education and avoid everything to do with business.