It
can be libelous - if the corporation or company can be identified easily by context, and/or the workforce is "small" and can be identified, and the operations of this corporation or company and its workers are impugned in some way.
Anything written that reflects on the financial condition of the corporation, or that reflects on the management of the corporation, or that reflects on the conduct of the corporation, can be libelous, such as falsely saying the company is going bankrupt or the management is unethical or they engage in dishonest business practices. It seems, from what you have posted, that you are implying an ineptness of some sort by this company.
In order for it to be libel, what is written must be
false. There are two main defenses to defamation - one is truth and the other is opinion.
If what you write is true, it does not
prevent you from being sued, but it does prevent the person suing you from winning any suit. In your example, everything you are saying is probably not provably true. It is probably not provably true that
all of the workers are unskilled and unprofessional, for instance.
You are also free to criticize and comment on a company and/or its workers. Opinion is free speech. But you must be careful with opinion that it does not imply fact - and you are getting into dangerous territory with the "unskilled, unprofessional workers" comment. You are close to implying a knowledge of the workforce and their abilities that you may not, and probably don't, have. Whether this would be considered strictly opinion would depend on your actual knowledge of the operations of the company and their hiring policies, and your relationship to the company.
At any rate, corporations have a reputation and an image to protect, just as individuals do. Anything defamatory written about a corporation or a person can injure a reputation.
Although you
generally cannot libel a large group, such as an entire ethnic group or a political party or all teachers in Kentucky or the city of Detroit, for examples, it is still definitely possible to libel a corporation and any small group.
Now, here are the problems I see you potentially running into with your comment about the company operations (and this all depends on who you are and where your comments are coming from):
If you are writing in a local paper in Kentucky, you are already identifying the school system. If you were writing about a California school system, for instance, you would be mentioning California by name, as the readers would otherwise have no clue what you were talking about. The same goes for a school system outside your immediate area. Therefore, you are probably writing to an
informed audience, who will recognize what school system you are referring to in your comment, simply by your
own assumption that they know what you are talking about.
You are speaking, also, about the management of this school system, which narrows the company identity down, as I assume only one company manages this school system.
In addition, by "identifying" the school system and the company, you have now
also identified the small group of individuals working there.
So, even though what you wrote referred to an "unnamed" company and "unnamed workers", the company, the school system and the individual workers have, essentially, been identified.
Do I think anyone will sue you over what you wrote? Probably not.
It would really depend on what sort of impact your comment has on the reputation of the company and those mentioned. You will probably tick off the workers by calling them unskilled and unprofessional, but I doubt if any will go to the expense of suing. Unless the company suffers financially from your comments, they are unlikely to sue. If you are an ordinary citizen in the community, your comments would have less impact, say, than they would if you were the Superintendent of Schools, and the comments will have less impact as a letter to the editor than they would as a comment made by someone in the role of deciding whether to extend the contract of this company, in its management of the school system, for another year. So it all depends.
You could always show the comments you made to a Kentucky lawyer to get a better idea of the likelihood of a suit. Lawsuits are always possible, because there is almost always someone around who wants to sue, and there are lawyers salivating on every corner.
