On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:33:34 -0800, Scott Skylane
wrote:


The reduction in employee morale will cost far more than $7500 in lost
future productivity.

While it may be a stretch, I look at it this way:

Columbia may have laid them off based on a view that the problem would
take much longer to fix than it did. At this point, they could choose
to pay the affected employees or possibly provide some other perk to
improve morale. Or, they could do nothing.

It will be interesting to see what happens.