WASHINGTON - For some employees, the Resolution Trust Corp. will live on past the congressionally mandated Dec. 31 shutdown date.
And the fact that 552 people will keep working while 1,843 will lose their jobs is creating problems for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which takes over the RTC's work load at year's end.
Leading the charge of disgruntled employees are four men in the RTC's Atlanta office who have filed a "grievance," the civil service precursor to a lawsuit, over the way RTC selected the employees to work for the FDIC after Dec. 31.
The four men, who claim 35 years' FDIC/RTC experience among them, filed their final administrative appeal Nov. 29 with the RTC's acting chief of employee relations, Robert Winter.
The employees alerted FDIC chairman Ricki Helfer and acting RTC chief executive Jack Ryan by E-mail Thursday, warning the grievance contains "potentially embarrassing events on the immediate horizon."
The complaint was rejected Oct. 31 by William Dudley, who runs the RTC's Atlanta office. The men appealed Mr. Dudley's decision to Thomas Horton, a vice president at RTC headquarters here, who agreed with Mr. Dudley and rejected it on Nov. 22.
As with pending lawsuits, FDIC and RTC spokesman said Friday they could not comment on the ongoing grievance. If Mr. Winter also rejects the case, the next step for the employees would be a lawsuit.
Three of the employees - Donald E. Daly, Lawrence Mills, and H. Michael Muniz - are senior operations specialists in the RTC's Atlanta office. The fourth, Gary Ross, is a receivership contract manager there.
In RTC-speak, the four employees are termed "liquidation grade," or LG for short. These employees have long been scheduled to lose their jobs on Dec. 31. But with the FDIC-directed extensions, some will work through May. Of the 620 LG employees in Atlanta, 171 received extensions, according to the RTC.
The grievance claims that the RTC selected people for continued employment before selection procedures were set. Documents supporting the grievance also charge that FDIC officials rejected some of the employees selected by RTC managers and replaced them with other people.
The four men want the extensions rescinded, the jobs posted, and all LG staff allowed to compete for the positions.
RTC spokesman Steve Katsanos said the agency has had 21 grievances filed this year, with just this one challenging its LG extension policy.
