When you read the Shelby Star article entitled “Gardner-Webb offering voluntary resignation packages” to 350 employees; you have to take off the rose colored glasses, hold your nose and just cut through the crap to understand anything. A voluntary resignation package is a way to fire an employee and give them some sort of benefit package so they keep their mouths shut and won’t file a lawsuit over a retirement pension they will not be getting. An involuntary resignation is when you are just fired. Either way you are out of a job and you will NOT be getting any retirement pay from Gardner-Webb. All in the name of improving the financial situation of the business.
That is what the Star reported, which was basically a press release from Gardner-Webb to put them in the best light possible to the public regarding whatever bad situation their financials are in. If past experience with other businesses is a guide, when Gardner-Webb gets all the suckers to take voluntary resignation packages, they will search out the most senior folks just shy of retirement, but not yet eligible for retirement (those with the most to lose and Gardner-Webb with the most to gain) and fire as many of those as possible.
It’s an old trick to steal money out of pension accounts and use it for other purposes. To pay bonus’s for favorites, to pay extra dividends to stockholders or sometimes to keep from going bankrupt. Duke Power got rid of a lot of employees that way a few years ago. Then they took the money saved, along with other money, and bought out the old Carolina Power and Light company and others to become Duke Energy, the largest power company in the USA. I don’t know about you, but I never noticed any reduction in my power bill. I suspect Duke would say my power bill would have been even higher if they had not done such things.
Bottom line in understanding the Star article and what is really going on at Gardner-Webb is to consider what they have done in the past. They colluded with the County Commissioners to sell some land that was bequeathed to Gardner-Webb to a middleman cheap and the land was then resold to Cleveland County by the middleman at double the price. The middleman actually owned the land for only one minute as the deed from Gardner-Webb to the middleman was stamped at the Register of Deeds office and then the deed from the middleman to Cleveland County was stamped one minute later. And, the Chairman of the County Commissioners just happened to be a Trustee at Gardner-Webb. Not a word of this was ever printed in the Shelby Star although all the documents are right there in the files at the Register of Deeds Office. I can name all the names if anybody cares. If the original records happen to turn up missing over the years, I have copies.
Then, there was the time Gardner-Webb changed a grade for a star basketball player so he wouldn’t flunk out. The word got out and there was big controversy. Lots of lies and cover-ups. I think it took ten years for all that to blow over. Gardner Webb administration, at the highest level, was involved in that.
