Tar Heel Temps to shutter operations this month
By Kirk Ross, Staff Writer
UNC Campus — Tar Heel Temps, the university’s temporary staffing service that has operated for 17 years, will close at the end of the month, officials announced this week.
In an email to department heads and senior staff, Brenda Malone, vice chancellor for human resources, said the decision was a difficult one and “made with a heavy heart.â€
In addition to being one of the largest local sources of temporary work, for many the service has proved an informal route to permanent jobs on campus.
Malone cited a drop in temporary hiring, tight budgets and an increase in administrative overhead as the key reasons for the closure.
In an interview Tuesday, she said her department is working on long-term plans and strategies for handling temporary staffing.
She said the number of employees in the Tar Heel Temp system has dropped considerably in the past two years as a budget squeeze led to a decrease in hiring. Only about 125 temps are employed under the system — down from about 200 this time last year and far below normal levels. The number of university departments and other units using the service has declined as well.
“It boils down to economics,†Malone said. “Our business is down.â€
Malone said once the decision to close the service was made, the task became designing a new system for departments who rely on temporary labor.
“We wanted to minimize the disruption to university units that employ temporary workers,†she said.
At the end of the month, current Tar Heel Temps employees will be converted to department payrolls and each department will take over hiring its own temporary workers either directly or through other temp services.
Malone said she is hoping that by reallocating and reassigning roles within her department she can avoid layoffs for the eight human resources staff members who administered the temps program.
I worked with Tar Heel Temps from the years of 1997 till 2001. When I worked with this company they were good enough to roll over my paying jobs while on job so that I never had to take a 30 day break from work and never had to leave. This was done by getting with a second temp place.
While working there the cap at those times was 10.00 an hour but the power plant that i had worked for at the time was able to get them to pay me at the rate of 10.50. I did a lot of data base work for them. I was also able to go from a processing Assistant III in the system to a IV.
The only problems were ever reaching the level of 5 in the state system also when working with the state advancement seemed impossible! But while working with this company at those times i found it a good resource at that point in life.
Now my only question is how to get a hold of your old work records for someone seeking a job in today’s economy.