Many of the people being sent home are people in their 20's and 30's. I know this for a fact because I just met a number of them while visiting a friend at walkill.
I am unaware of any older ones being sent home. The majority of construction projects are being stopped except for warwick. I was told the society feels that building stuff for the bethel family is not gods direction and the money will be better spent on more kingdom halls where there is a real great need. I was also told that they wanted to send as many workers into the field as possible.
I was told they would be sending over a 1000 people from us bethel back to their homes etc. Only essential staff would remain. I was told that they would no longer have morning worship in the cafeteria but each bethelite would buy their own breakfast from the commissary which they would get a little extra stipend each month to cover the cost. This would have a few benefits such as they would no longer require a large cooking and cleaning staff which would allow these workers to go back into the preaching work. This would save time for the bethel family and save costs. The bethelites can have morning worship through the watchtower on demand system that goes straight to each bethelites tv. Bethel in every country has already ended the gathering in the cafeteria for morning worship for some time now with the us branch as the only branch yet to end this arrangement. I remember them saying something about the cleaning staff might be leaving to.
I was told that when the watchtower started off its location in ny it was crucial. One reason was because the waterways were important for shipping material world wide. Today, The high end self sufficient printing equipment in ny is the same at other bethel branches world wide. There is no longer a need for many people nor is there a need to ship stuff from ny to the whole world. Now bethel branches around the world are better located to print and distribute literature from their locations using the same high end printing equipment ny uses. This saves on numerous costs associated with the shipping process.
The watchtower moving from new york to war wick will accomplish these things . This will remove the bethel family from the dangers of living in new york city and all the opportunity's to commit wrong doing. This will save the watchtower lots of money in utilities costs, ny taxes, transportation costs in ny, etc. I was told there are actually taxes the society still has to pay and high costs due to living in ny. One thing the brother mentioned was that ny is a target for terrorists but I dont think that was an official reason for leaving ny. The society does not need to be in ny anymore and theres no longer a need to pay the costs associated with being in new york or putting the bethel family in harms way by living in ny. When warwick is finished everything will be relocated to warwick.
