“Yeah,” Nicole said.“Partner.”
“Wait,” Selma said, pointing her finger across the table. “He’s not our new sales guy?”
“No,” Nicole told her, “and he never was. He was on our payroll somehow, but he was a viper in our midst. He was spying for Last Chance the whole time.”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said.
“You thought you were so cool, playing undercover boss while deciding who would lose their jobs, but you made some mistakes.”
“The email account for the second email,” Kingston said. “I figured it out that night, but it was too late.”
“Yeah, once you sent the second email from your Last Chance partner account,kingston mooreat last chance inc dot com, the ISP made it easier to trace you as a partner. We had info in fifteen minutes.”
“I was careless.” Kingston looked straight at her. “I was distracted.”
“And then you made another mistake,” Nicole said. “You sent those layoff emails on Monday, but you didn’t file the paperwork with HR to lay people off until yesterday afternoon, Wednesday. We filed our union paperwork with the state Tuesday morning, and the IFPTE recognized us that afternoon as a chapter.”
“The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers is a union for scientists,” Morrissey said, nitpicking. “The admin, accounting, and legal staff wouldn’t be covered.”
“Sidewinder has been declared an R&D and materials science company for union purposes,” Nicole told him. “Our other staff is covered by the same union. You don’t want to negotiate with five different unions, do you? Because we will totally talk to each other.”
“No,” Kingston said. “We accept Fairways and Greens Un-Ionized as the union representing Sidewinder’s employees.”
“And that means you have to negotiate in good faith,” she told them.
“We know labor law,” Morrissey said, his tone sharp.
“Looks like you didn’t get your Bloody Mary this morning,” Nicole said to him. “I was reading it into the record.”
Kingston quietly placed his hand on the table in front of Morrissey, who rolled his eyes. “Nicole, let’s negotiate in good faith.”
“Okay,” she said. “First order of business: layoffs. No layoffs until January at the earliest.”
“We can’t delay it that long,” Kingston said. “The second round should have been in July, and I delayed it for no good reason. This company is falling apart. If we don’t reduce costs now, Last Chance will have to liquidate Sidewinder.”
“Threatening to close a company when the workers join a union violates the National Labor Relations Act. We will report any unfair labor practices to the National Labor Relations Board, and to reiterate, we are recording this meeting.”
Morrissey muttered, “She’s right.”
“Sidewinder’s finances have been precarious,” Kingston said to Nicole, “and that’s a generous way of describing them, foryears.We aren’t closing to avoid unionizing. We might have to close the company because even one more hit would mean insolvency.”
“The NLRB won’t see it that way,” Nicole said.
Morrissey said under his breath to Kingston, “The absolute last thing Last Chance or Sidewinder needs is an NLRB investigation.”
Kingston interlaced his fingers and leaned forward. “Sidewinder has to be solventnow.Last Chance has been pouring money into it, hoping for a miracle turnaround that didn’t happen. The situation is desperate. The layoffs are necessary.”
Something wasn’t making sense. “Why did you think ‘a miracle’ would happen when you bought the company? It’s been puttering along with the same cash flow for years.”
The other guy, Jericho Parr, spoke up. “We were misled by the former owner on two fronts. First, he didn’t disclose a lien against the company that we discovered only after the sale.”
“That’s not our problem. Sue him for fraud,” Nicole said.
“It’s too late for that and won’t fix the bottom line,” Jericho said.
“And what was the other thing?” she asked.
Kingston said, “Joe Flanagan said that several innovative new products along the same line as the Scimitar Edge lob wedge were ready for commercialization.”
