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ff their unemployment expenses and other employee benefits payable to them.

As long as the reasons of Midwest Education for laying off ETA employees is sound and fair and in keeping with the employment laws, there is nothing wrong with opting to hire new employees instead of relocating existing staff if to do so will only result in tremendous expense to the company. Furthermore, it will also not be profitable to Midwest Education to retain ETA staff by relocating them when there is no guarantee that the latter will be loyal to the goals and visions of the company.

It should be noted that mergers and acquisitions have a lasting effect on employee engagement and motivations to work in the company. For instance, while the staff of ETA may be loyal to their former employer, the result of the acquisition by Midwest Education can affect their performance and productivity and Midwest has an interest in maintaining efficiency in their workplace by retaining employees who are loyal to the company. Employee engagement is a result of various factors namely: confidence in the organization, having a promising future, support from the company, safety, reasonable stress levels, opportunity for improvement, reputation of the company, effective managers, enjoying one's work, and confidence with senior leaders (Schweiger & Denisi, 1991).

The employees of ETA, after severance of their employment, can also opt to apply as new applicants in the Massachusetts office if they wish to do so. However, while they are still employed under the Midwest Education, they cannot be treated as a new pool of applicants because they are considered as regular employees and as such, they are entitled to all benefits and protections afforded to them as such employees which is different from those given to applicants. In all instances, Midwest Education has to communicate to the ETA employees it plans so that they will have time to consider other options for themselves.

Which of the three approaches should Midwest education use to select which manufacturing employees to keep? Is there a better method?

There are three approaches proposed by the senior managers of Midwest in selecting which manufacturing employees they should keep. One strategy proposed by Jenny Lutz is cost reduction which will be carried out by automating all the processes by installing robotic arms. These robotic arms will be responsible for loading the raw materials at the start of the production line. It will also transfer the jobs between the processes and do the final stacking and palletizing of the products. However, she proposed that all of ETA staff should be retained because they are essential to the relocation of the equipment. The strategy is to identify the key skills needed for the manufacturing division, match the same with the existing staff and the remainder of the available positions shall be filled by re-interviewing. According to Jenny, this will also enable Midwest to cut staff which are no longer performing well such as the older staff. However, Max Thorn opposed said proposal because it violates equal opportunity laws and would open the company to employment lawsuits in the process.

A second strategy proposed by Lawrence Wilson is to keep the entire staff but reduce their work hours from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week. He reasoned that this will only take three to four years. However, as Max Th