When Hamilton County Clerk Bill Knowles' son Finley left his full-time job at the clerk's office in 2008 to start his own business, he was allowed to keep working there part time for more than a year and keep his benefits under a program originally intended to help working mothers.
In January this year, the clerk's office laid off four working mothers, one with 19 years' seniority, who now say they were never given an option to work part time. Two have filed discrimination complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The clerk's office blamed the cuts on declining fee collections.
The four women laid off -- Monica Hubbard Hardwick 40; Pamela Patton, 49; Nina Kvestad, 46; and Felecia Mason, 50 -- worked as intake specialists, waiting on the public and handling motor vehicle transactions.
Patton started work in 1991, Hardwick in 2005, Kvestad in 2007 and Mason in 2008. Five-year employee Phillip Eskew, who worked in the miscellaneous tax division, was laid off at the same time. Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.
All four women said they would have taken part-time work if it had been offered to them. Three of the women said they thought it was unfair they did not get that opportunity.
Finley Knowles used the Skills Incentive Management Program, or SKIMP, from January 2008 to April 2009 while he started his own business, CertaPro Painters. He was allowed to keep some of his benefits, including health insurance, while working a minimum of 25 hours a week.
Knowles returned to full-time county employment in 2009.
He is among a number of county employees who have used the SKIMP program in recent years. Currently there are 24 county general government employees on SKIMP, officials said recently.
Finley is paid $82,000 a year; none of the women laid off earned more than $37,000.
"I was very upset," said Hardwick of learning from a story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the clerk's son had received SKIMP benefits that she wasn't offered. "I initially inquired about part-time work. I have seizures, and I'm on medication for that. They said they couldn't offer me part-time work."
Debbie Rollins, the chief deputy clerk, said that before the layoffs some clerk's office workers were offered part-time employment under SKIMP.
Rollins said, "We were asked to stop doing it because it looked discriminatory." She did not say who asked the office to stop making the offers.
County Human Resources Director Rebecca Hunter said SKIMP is a remnant of a federal program intended to help working mothers.
Rollins said "there really aren't any rules" governing which employees in the clerk's office are eligible for SKIMP.
"It's just on a case-by-case basis," she said.
Hardwick and Patton said they each filed independent EEOC complaints during the summer.
Patton said she based her complaint on race, wage and age discrimination and violation of human rights. Hardwick alleged discrimination based on disability. Hardwick, Patton and Mason are black; Kvestad is white.
An EEOC spokesman said the agency does not comment on or acknowledge complaints.
Kvestad and Mason said they did not feel that the layoffs were discriminatory.
Bill Knowles would not comment about the layoffs or the EEOC complaints and said the layoffs were fair.
"After the facts of the financial situations in those areas, where the shortages were is where the cuts had to be made," Knowles said. His son-in-law and grandson also work at the clerk's office.
Rollins said each division of the county clerk's office is supported by the fees it collects, but she said the divisions do not have separate budgets.
Hardwick and Patton said there had been signs that collections were tapering off after the federal Cash for Clunkers program ended in August 2009. Kvestad said new car sales "had slowed down quite a bit."
LIVES CHANGED
Hardwick said she suffered an accidental brain injury in February 2008 and recently was awarded full Social Security disability. She said her condition limits her options.
"My doctor told me I couldn't work another job because that's what I last did and that's what I know," Hardwick said.
Patton said she began drawing unemployment, but that's nearly gone. She will be eligible to draw county retirement benefits when she turns 55, she said.
Mason, a single mother who was the lowest paid of the four women, said she already had been working part time at Belk at Hamilton Place to supplement her income from the clerk's office. She still has that job.
"Whether or not it's fair or unfair, it don't matter because it is what it is," she said. "Family takes priority over anything else, probably."
Kvestad worked in the clerk's Bonny Oaks office with Mason and had a second job at Walgreens. She now works there full time and takes college courses in business administration online. She wants to open a coffee shop.
Kvestad also said it was unfair that she was not offered SKIMP employment.
"They should have been able to offer us that," she said.