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Congressmen pen letter asking for layoff data from Ochsner CEO

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Democratic 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson and his Louisiana counterpart are requesting data about the massive layoffs at Ochsner Health System to ensure Black workers and other minorities were not disproportionately impacted.

Thompson and U.S. Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana penned a letter to Ochsner CEO Pete November last week. The layoffs, which represented about 2% of the health system’s workforce, spanned both Mississippi and Louisiana.

“While only you can make your business decisions, historically these types of actions have disproportionately affected women, and minority communities including Black, Asian, and Hispanic individuals,” the letter stated.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) departs a House vote at the U.S. Capitol July 14, 2022. (Francis Chung/E&E News/POLITICO via AP Images)

“We write today to ensure that the actions taken align with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, including Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, applicable labor practices and fundamental fairness.”

Thompson and Carter requested specific data, including demographics of the layoffs sorted by race, gender and age; parish of laid off employees; and downsized positions by number, classification and salary.

November on Thursday wrote back to Thompson assuring him that the decision-making process was “deliberate, organized and thorough” and included “ … significant input from legal counsel – to ensure that all our workforce reduction decisions were based on legitimate and objective criteria tied to the business needs of the organization, and that there were no improper disparities in our workforce reduction based on race, gender, or age.”

November also repeated what he said in a memo announcing the layoffs: the positions primarily affected were management and non-direct patient care roles, and employees with clinical credentials were offered frontline patient care roles with an incentive package.

He referenced the current nationwide nursing shortage and said he is hopeful that employees who were laid off will move into “full-time frontline roles.”

“We are already working with many clinical employees who have expressed interest in continuing their career at Ochsner, and we have rehired a significant number of affected employees to bedside positions,” he wrote. “ … We are hopeful that many impacted employees who have been in largely administrative roles will move into full-time frontline roles, and we continue to recruit for several hundred unfilled frontline nursing roles across our system.”

At the end of the letter, November said his team is willing to meet to discuss the specific information Thompson requested.

When the layoffs were announced last month, a spokesperson for Ochsner Health declined to answer Mississippi Today’s question about how many of the affected positions were in Mississippi.

Ochsner Health has dozens of operations in Mississippi, many of which are in the southern part of the state and on the Gulf Coast.

The cuts are expected to save between $125 million and $150 million a year, according to NOLA.com, and is the largest such reduction in the hospital system’s history.

Thompson referred to the “significant federal assistance” Ochsner received in the form of federal pandemic funds and said that constituents have been reaching out to his office.

“The letter was sent in response to the layoffs. They have received significant federal assistance, and we want to ensure that through this phase of reduction, they are fair to all employee concerns,” he said in an emailed statement to Mississippi Today. “As these layoffs occur, we want to ensure that they are fair to the employees. Constituents have reached out to our offices numerous times.”

He did not answer whether he has asked for similar information from companies in the past.

Carter’s office did not respond to questions and a request for comment from Mississippi Today.

Read the full letter from Thompson here. Read November’s reply here.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1865

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-24 07:00:00

Dec. 24, 1865

The Ku Klux Klan began on Christmas Eve in 1865. Credit: Zinn Education Project

Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others. 

While the first wave of the KKK operated in the South through the 1870s, the second wave spread throughout the U.S., adding Catholics, Jews and others to their enemies’ list. Membership rose to 4 million or so. 

The KKK returned again in the 1950s and 1960s, this time in opposition to the civil rights movement. Despite the history of violence by this organization, the federal government has yet to declare the KKK a terrorist organization.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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An old drug charge sent her to prison despite a life transformation. Now Georgia Sloan is home

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mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-12-24 04:00:00

CANTON –  Georgia Sloan is home, back from a potentially life-derailing stint in prison that she was determined to instead make meaningful. 

She hadn’t used drugs in three years and she had a life waiting for her outside the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women in Pearl: a daughter she was trying to reunite with, a sick mother and a career where she found purpose. 

During 10 months of incarceration, Sloan, who spent over half of her life using drugs, took classes, read her Bible and helped other women. Her drug possession charge was parole eligible, and the Parole Board approved her for early release. 

At the end of October, she left the prison and returned to Madison County. The next day she was back at work at Musee, a Canton-based bath products company that employs formerly incarcerated women like Sloan and others in the community facing difficulties. She first started working at the company in 2021. 

“This side of life is so beautiful. I would literally hold on to my promise every single minute of the day while I was in (prison),” Sloan told Mississippi Today in December. 

Next year, she is moving into a home in central Mississippi, closer to work and her new support system. Sloan plans to bring her daughter and mother to live with her. Sloan is hopeful of regaining custody of her child, who has been cared for by her aunt on a temporary basis. 

“This is my area now,” she said. “This has become my family, my life. This is where I want my child to grow up. This is where I want to make my life because this is my life.” 

Additionally, Sloan is taking other steps to readjust to life after prison: getting her driver’s license for the first time in over a decade, checking in monthly with her parole officer and paying court-ordered fines and restitution. 

In December 2023, Sloan went to court in Columbus for an old drug possession charge from when she was still using drugs. 

Sloan thought the judge would see how much she had turned her life around through Crossroads Ministries, a nonprofit women’s reentry center she entered in 2021, and Musee. Her boss Leisha Pickering who drove her to court and spoke as a witness on Sloan’s behalf, thought the judge would order house arrest or time served. 

Circuit Judge James “Jim” Kitchens of the 16th District.

Instead, Circuit Judge James Kitchens sentenced her to eight years with four years suspended and probation. 

He seemed doubtful about her transformation, saying she didn’t have a “contrite heart.” By choosing to sell drugs, Kitchens said she was “(making) other people addicts,” according to a transcript of the Dec. 4, 2023, hearing. 

“I felt like my life literally crumbled before my eyes,” Sloan said about her return to prison. “Everything I had worked so hard for, it felt like it had been snatched from me.”

She was taken from the courtroom to the Lowndes County Detention Center, where she spent two months before her transfer to the women’s prison in Rankin County. 

Sloan found the county jail more difficult because there was no separation between everyone there. But the prison had its own challenges, such as violence between inmates and access to drugs, which would have threatened her sobriety. 

She kept busy by taking classes, which helped her set a goal to take college courses one day with a focus on business. Visits, phone calls and letters from family members and staff from Musee and Crossroads were her lifeline. 

“I did not let prison break me, I rose above it, and I got to help restore other ladies,” Sloan said. 

She also helped several women in the prison get to Crossroads – the same program that helped her and others at Musee. 

Sloan credits a long-term commitment to Crossroads and Musee for turning her life around – the places where she said someone believed in her and took a chance on her. 

Georgia Sloan, left, and Leisha Pickering, founder and CEO of Musee Bath, sit for a portrait at the Musee Bath facility in Canton, Miss., on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. Pickering has supported Sloan through her journey of recovery and reentry, providing employment and advocacy as Sloan rebuilds her life after incarceration. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Pickering, Musee’s CEO, said in the three years she’s known Sloan, she’s watched her grow and become a light for others. 

The bath and lifestyle company has employed over 300 formerly incarcerated women in the past dozen years, but Pickering said not everyone has had the same support, advocacy and transformation as Sloan. Regardless, Pickering believes each person is worth fighting for. 

When Sloan isn’t traveling for work to craft markets with Pickering, she shares an office with her Musee colleague Julie Crutcher, who is also formerly incarcerated and a graduate of Crossroads’ programs. She also considers Crutcher a close friend and mentor.

Sloan has traveled to Columbus to see her mother and daughter whom she spent Thanksgiving with. She will see them again for Christmas and celebrate her daughter’s 12th birthday the day after.

Her involvement with the criminal justice system has made Sloan want to advocate for prison reform to help others and be an inspiration to others.

“I never knew what I was capable of,” Sloan said.  “I never knew how much people truly, genuinely love me and love being around me. I never knew how much I could have and how much I could offer the world.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1946

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-23 07:00:00

Dec. 23, 1946

Chuck Cooper Credit: Wikipedia

University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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