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Morals and Layoffs
Radical changes in modern institutional structure have ushered in an era of short-term, contract, or episodic labor, writes economist Richard Sennett in his book The Corrosion of Character. Corporations have sought to remove layers of bureaucracy, to become "flatter and more flexible" organizations. In place of pyramid-style organizations, management wants now to think of organizations as networks. This means many more layoffs, writes Sennett, and also that promotions and dismissals tend not to be based any longer on fixed rules, since tasks are fluid, and the network is constantly redefining its structure.
Executives are paid more and more to re-shape companies, and work becomes less stable in direct proportion. Workers have never been more powerless, their tenure more fragile. Tech workers, many of whom came of age in an era of growth and full employment, are learning the lessons of the real world quickly. Tasks and missions are temporal, the people employed to execute them highly disposable. Work and workers are both flexible and expendable.
One of the most shocking and widely accepted tenets of the new techno-workplace is that the well-run company, the one that wants to compete in the global economy, has to be so fluid, evolving and responsive to change that thousands of employees can get dumped at one whack and it's not even controversial. That's a pretty long trek from the capitalist ethic that only a few years ago valued corporate loyalty as much as profits, and touted the company-employee bond.
And it raises all sorts of new questions -- especially for a generation of tech workers experiencing layoffs for the first time.
In the Corporate Republic, where corporations fund the political system, control most mass media, write legislation, and now dominate entertainment and culture (and soon, much of technology, from bio-tech to Net access), there are few agreed-upon rules about layoffs. Hardly any would get far in Washington, the world headquarters of corporate lobbying. (Congress, allegedly the public's lobbyists, are scrambling to get campaign funds from corporate donors.)
Unions, already on the wane, have never gained much hold in the Tech Nation, populated by educated, mobile, skilled and independent-minded workers. Some tech companies are comparatively generous -- extending health plans beyond the federal requirements with some benefits extending past a layoff date.
Cisco has offered to pay its laid-off workers for an additional year if they work for charities the company supports. It's nice, but it isn't the same as job security. And even that kind of moral responsibility is rare.
Under COBRA (The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) passed by Congress in l985, some laid-off or terminated workers (those fired for reasons other than gross misconduct) are entitled to continuation of health benefits for extended periods of time. COBRA doesn't cover companies with fewer than 20 employees, and it doesn't cover all workers terminated under all circumstances. If the company goes bankrupt, for example, COBRA doesn't apply at all. You have to check and see if you're eligible.)
Corporations have no particular incentive to be generous, or even ethical, to terminated employees. Most answer to boards of directors and demanding shareholders expecting maximum profits. Generosity towards workers doesn't serve the bottom line, even when it might serve the company's long-term interests. One of the reasons Cisco treats laid-off workers well, company officials have conceded, is to keep morale high among remaining employees, who feel better about the company and the work they do for it.
All sorts of class issues are roiling the new, techno-driven workforce, amid the thousands of layoffs being announced weekly.
The layoff was once the more or less exclusive province of the working class. but in recent years -- and especially recent months -- it has become a fixture of the white-collar and managerial universe, and of skilled, educated, tech workers. U.S. employment figures show the number of workers on nonfarm payrolls plummeting.
Now lawyers and journalists are getting laid off as well as tech workers, and when reporters started hitting the sidewalk, layoffs became a big story in a hurry.
Yahoo, Dell, AOL Time-Warner and scores of other companies have collectively let go of hundreds of thousands of employees (soon, probably to be followed by layoffs at the new company formed by Hewlitt-Packard's acquisition of Compaq). A generation of tech workers, for the first time, is feeling the impact of a workplace in which corporations seem to feel virtually no moral obligation to the employees they let go.
So just what moral obligation does a company have to laid-off workers?
Some possibilities:
- Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way.
- Continued health benefits. Employment used to be a contract: you worked hard for the company, the company took reasonable care of you. Employees who have been with a corporation any length of time at all -- I'd say six months -- ought to keep their health benefits until they find new work, a guarantee not even COBRA provides.
- Innovative responses. The layoff has become almost a corporate reflex, a statement to analysts, boards of directors and stockholders that management is lean and mean. When the market drops, capital gets squeezed,or takeovers occur, employment gets slashed. This often seems short-sighted. Tech workers are skilled and valuable. It's difficult to predict the nature of technology, and of consumer attitudes towards technological products and innovation. People laid off today might be urgently needed in six months. Shouldn't they at least have a chance to come up with other tasks, products, functions or ideas before they're booted out?
For that matter, tech workers could seek out companies with humane policies towards their workforce, making the companies more valuable and competitive. They could also begin demanding contracts and codified job security when the seek and accept positions -- especially when the economy is in their favor.
Regulatory agencies consider the impact of corporate decision-making on the environment, the consumer, and on anti-trust issues. Why aren't consideration of layoffs and job losses a factor in mergers like that between AOL and Time-Warner, or Hewlitt-Packard and Compaq? Maybe the loss of thousands of jobs isn't worth the short-term savings of some mergers.
Let's not kid ourselves. In the Corporate Republic, we can't expect companies, governments, unions or regulatory agencies to strengthen a sense of corporate morality or humanity. Corporations are more powerful than any of these entities, as tech workers are discovering by the thousands. Workers are on their own. Companies will demonstrate loyalty when they re-gain a sense that it's more efficient, ultimately more profitable, to keep experienced loyal workers than to employ insecure short-term ones. That's possible. But it isn't likely.
Right now it's turning into a "you'll start carrying an ID or you'll cry and carry an ID" republic.
...crap.
Security of the individual seems to be taking a very solid backseat to the security of the institutions that are supposed to be providing security for the individual.
Every institution seems to eventually forget that their strength comes from the people underneath, be it a company or a government.
Laws should spring forth from society and not be sent down from above. As well as a company's employees should work to better a company rather than having a company as a shelter from poverty.
We have forgotten that the relationship of larger institutions and the individual is a symbiotic one.
After allowing employees to take a voluntary pay cut to save their company and thereby their jobs, Hewlett Packard has found the $130 million in savings was not enough to make investors happy. So, some of the very same employees who gave up salary "for the benefit of the company" are seeing their loyalty paid off in pink slips.
But wait. In what they are heralding as "the next era in employee outplacement," HP is giving it employees a choice of how exactly they will be shitcanned. Apparently, the recent repositioning campaign about sending HP back to the garage where its founder, well, founded the company was no metaphor. By the time the company is done trimming, the remaining staff will be able to comfortably fit in an average two car garage.
Industry analysts say that if HP keeps firing people at this rate, they should be in the black by year's end, even if they sell nothing at all.
More than 6,000 HP Employees found this check-a-box note in their mail trays on Thursday morning.
[Note: "Have my manager fired or laid-off instead of me" was not part of the option menu. Neither was "Screw the investors, we're not in the f***ing commodity business."]
HP CEO Carly Fiorina says that she is excited about the company's brave new direction in outplacement.
"At HP, we've always been innovators in terms of employee benefits and employee options," said Fiorina. "We think other companies in our peer group will be following our lead."
Chief among the innovations in the program is the new "volunteer status" which allows employees to continue working for HP and serving HP customers without actually getting paid. While the money they would have made is not tax deductible, they are, as Fiorina put it, perfectly free to brag about it as they would for any volunteer work. The company has outlined preliminary plans for Habitat-For-Humanity-style t-shirts for the new volunteers.
"You would be shocked to learn what people will do for a t-shirt," said Fiorina.
@home just layed of 500 more people with no severence package at all - just payed through the day. As an employee I am weighting my options as the musical chairs of my job can't work for me if I'm going paycheck to paycheck. Blah.
Yes you are. Admit it. Set yourself free.
On the other hand, you could be right. You're just a pathetic loser.
C'mon, Jon, i've come to expect a certain "knee-jerk" response from you on these posts, and frankly I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't see it here. Actually, I'd like to see some answers. After the events of the past two weeks, I think that all of us are rethinking our job stability.
John
Boy, jus tlike Katz to pick up a 30 year old trend and call it new.
Of course, in the '70;s it was blue collar workers like steel and auto workers.
In the early 90's it was mid level managers.
Now it's affecting geeks who's geekiness is being able to start Front Page and write wysiwig web pages.
As someone who worked through the 90-91 recession, this is nothing new, keep your skills up to date and keep rolling with the punches.
I would like to point out that when the DotBombs crashed, 99% of the folks that lost their jobs worked in the IT Industry. if you want more security, allpy your skills to another sector in the market like the automotive or aerospace sector, or the public sector(though the pay sucks)
that way when the IT industry, which is very volitile goes down, you still have a job. yes ripples in the market can affect others, but in auto, ford just shuts down production at first, then if things get seriouse they go to long term layoffs on the factory floor then move to the engeneers and software developers.
yes you won't get the pay you would working in IT industry, but the job security is much higher.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Well, as a somewhat technology savvy teen who just turned 15, I was looking forward to a summer job at a local dotcom. (I live in the Silicon Valley) Now when I inquired about simple mindless tasks that usually hire youths, I find no vacancies even at McDonald's! Heh. Just something to think about. Why would they hire a youth when they could hire someone who needs to feed his family.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
The first thing anyone in the workforce needs to learn is how to separate feelings from business.
A job is a job is a job. You are selling your skills and time to the highest bidder. Beyond your contract you owe them nothing and they owe you nothing (that's why the contract exists: to define obligations).
I have been "right-sized" three times in ten years and it is a dog-eat-dog world out there. Anyone who thinks that their company will put employee well-being ahead of (or even on par with) the bottom line should wake up and smell the coffee.
This is not to say that people should go around with a chip on their shoulder. Just recognize that business is business.
Remember these two sayings: All's fair in love and war. and Business is war. and you'll get along fine.
It HAS to be Microsoft's fault for layoffs in the US!!!
Come on Slashdotters, you know as well as I that the lack of Job Security in the US is a result of Microsoft's tyrranical ways. If LINUX ruled the world, there would be no more job cuts.
Armand28
"-LINUX was a good OS, before it became a religion."
I'm finding it hard to see anything new here.
I'm ex-military. When I was in, I was a commissioned officer. As such, I was expected to earn a master's degree in *something*, and fill a number of other career checkboxes. Failure to do so would make me ineligible for promotion to Major, and therefore ineligible to serve 20 and get a pension.
While I was in, I had a mentor, a Colonel, who'd changed jobs 33 times in his USAF career. Basically, he started looking for a new job as soon as he started a job, and he started something new each year.
I liked that, and that's how I run my life. As soon as I get a job, I'm looking for a job. I don't expect anything from my employer, except what I negotiate, and I don't even expect that to last.
I can remember my mother telling me to get a good job and hold it forever. And keep my money in a bank deposit account. Safety first. Sorry, illusion of safety first.
It's a cold, prickly world out there. Get used to it.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Guess this teachers those young college dropouts who thought they'd make it big programming Java, Vbscript, and doing help desk: go back to college. Don't even stop at your undergrad, if you want job security, get at least a Masters, hopefully your PhD. Sure, this won't guarantee job security, but think of how more marketable you are with a PhD in Math than the schmo who says, "Yes, I did take Calc I in college before I dropped out to pursue a career shooting people with Nerf balls."
Free Software is a plagued idea for a country heading into a recession. In hard times like these companies look to make the quick profit. In a open software model, there is not chance in hell that company will make a profit.
The five finger discount story went up at 7:54am. Your story on the same subject is up at 9:45. God you type fast!
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Many times "company loyalty" only goes one way with the employee giving it and the company giving the employee "the shaft." I have been there. However, I find it silly to expect that I can walk away from my job anytime, leaving my employer with ruined plans and wasted money but they must give me advanced notice before letting me go.
Don't get me wrong, an employer treating me right before letting me loose would be great! As an employee I should be willing to do the same for my employer should I start pursuing a career path away from them.
You sir are actually a turd burglar.
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
Lack of job security is an American thing. Sure, other countries have made it easier to lay people off, but not to the extent it has been taken in America. Corporations have your government representatives in their pockets, and corporations don't want job security. But why complain, job security seems to go hand-in-hand with left-wing socialist policies that so many Americans sneer at. "Socialism" seems to be a derogatory word to many Americans. Even countries like Britian or Canada who could be said to be the most similar in the world to the US idealogically get called "more socialist", as if it's bad. You want job security, embrace a bit of socialism.
Do they owe anything to the people they dump?
Morally, they owe you two weeks notice, or two weeks pay, at their descretion. Legally, they owe you nothing, in most states.
Likewise, if you quit, you owe them two weeks notice, morally, and nothing, legally.
Contracts of course change the legal situation, and in most cases, they change it in ways that favor the employers much more than the employees, but hey, that was your decision to make when you first decided to join, ya know.
I "set myself free" in your father's tight asshole last night, bitch.
That sounds good, but you will not get much work out of people that know their job is gone in six months -- especially while they are looking for other work. You then end up fighting the urge to just fire the employee.
Click here or here.
Look at all the posts on the message boards 2 years ago. Don't like the way your employer twirls his fingers counter clockwise (you like clockwise only); well you don't have any responsibility to your employer f'them, you don't need to give any notice just go where the money rolls. After all that, jumping to 5 different jobs in a single year, people are now wondering why employers are looking after them?
It's now time to suck it up and realize that we as employees caused this philosophy with employers, and we as employees are the only ones who can change this philosophy by actually showing loyalty to the back to the employer. Now don't get me wrong you should NOT be working there waiting on a paycheck 3 months late, getting paid in options instead until they get VC money, but putting some loyalty into your employer instead of trying to constantly pimp them is the first step.
Please pick one.
I've been made redundant twice this year.
After working for Grey Interactive UK for 18 months the tech slowdown eventually forced them to loose staff. throughout this process we were consulted and kept up to date with goings on, and when it came to the inevitable announcement I was one of approx 30% of the company. I was told that GIUK would try to place me with another Grey company, and if unsuccessful, within a month I would be made redundant. I was free to use the facilities to print CVs, browse the net, and generally look for work. I chose not to pursue a relocation to another Grey office, and spent most of the time out of the office, however, it was good to know there was some support there.
I found work with a company called Zinc a few weeks later and things were looking up, however after five weeks (yes weeks) I was called up, out of the blue with no forewarning. I was told their parent company was asking then to make redundancies (much like grey), and as it was a Last in First Out basis, I was to go.. I was escorted out the building and given a weeks notice pay.
in retrospect I feel I was treated fairly by Grey and discovered that small things can make such a huge difference in how you perceive you are being treated.
I think the most important thing is to keep your employees informed. It was such an amazing shock to me and I still feel rather bitter about it (while having fonder memories of my time at Grey (of course I was pretty pissed off about it at the time))
I have since found a new job... far from ideal, however beggars can't be choosers in the current tech climate
EMACS?! VI?! I target the individual bits on my HDD by diverting the path of cosmic rays through sheer willpower alone!
Perhaps corporate responsibility is more than a moral obligation. Many of Katz's suggestions seem more than reasonable, and perhaps some of these accomidations should be required. After all, you can't send someone to the soup line and expect the economy not to suffer, so it's not only in the interest of the individual, but the nation as a whole. Informing an employee with as much warning as an employee is expected to warn a company of a change in employment dosn't overly burden a company, so therefore its better for the economy if these types of responsibilities were moved out of the moral obligation arena and into contracts and/or laws. With buisnesses consolidating, going under, rising up, etc.. as fast as they are, labor unions, especially for high-tech jobs, cannot provide the needed support which they can offer long-term blue-collar employees of car factories and what not. That means we need intervention from elsewhere. Perhaps a government agency which helps employees form contracts with thier employers. Does anything like this exist? Could it? Or am I just dreaming?
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag.
The thinking is the hard part. Of course, Katz doesn't have that problem; his writing rarely ever has to pass through his brain. It's terribly efficient when you don't need to be insightful or creative.
I've been in this business for almost as long as the majority of users here have been alive. I've seen sweeping changes over the years as to how a company treats their tech workers.
When I started up true techs where few and far between in my geographical area. Most of the guys I knew who got into this business where starting a second career, thus older than the lot we have today, and had varying backgrounds like electronics wizards, telecom guys from the military, etc. We where treated with a lot more respect because the companies we worked for knew that they would have problems if we ever left.
The networks we put together weren't just made up of commodity hardware you can buy at the local CompUSA. Most networks where a reflection of the team that designed them. Little inconsistancies and tricks that only they knew about. If the sysop where to be let go, they'd be in for trouble.
Today we have millions of qualified(?) cookie cutter tech guys (and gals) out in the workforce. They've all pretty much had the same exposure to technology as they grew up and went to school. Basically, they're interchangable. I know this is a generalization, but it holds true for 99%.
It's very hard these days to distinguish yourself as a vital part of the corporate machine. Techs can be let go at anytime with the understanding that it will be easy to replace them with someone of equal ability and the skills required to manage an existing system.
load "linux",8,1
...for food.
For your information:
This comment is lame. It violates the postercomment compression filter.
> In the Corporate Republic, where corporations fund the political system, control most mass media, write legislation, and now dominate entertainment and culture
When my employer pays me, or makes good on the severance portions of the employment contract (even if that portion reads merely "We can fire your azz at will!"), they've made good.
Why can't Katz deal with that?
Yes, the economy is in the toilet, people are losing work, thousands have been killed, and the U.S. is "at war". It's been a shitty year.
And, I am not immune. I left a larger tech company to work for a smaller startup (with smart people and management, and that's coming from me being an arrogant SOB who thinks he's one of the smartest people he knows). I am a Canadian working in the U.S. on an H1-B visa anxiously awaiting a Green Card. I moved with my family from Illinois to Texas and just bought a house. If I lose my job I have to return to Canada or get another one PDQ.
I just got word of a 10% across the board pay cut. Ouch.
Frankly, I'm relieved that I have a job, and with some cash saved for a rainy day, and cutting back a little on paying down the mortgage and perhaps even 401k contributions, we'll get through this.
I had just hired someone to help me pull coax and Cat5 through my house. Turns out he lost his job a while ago and is doing this to make ends meet. He isn't the best guy for the job, but I'm happy to help him out -- he's worse off than me, I suppose.
And perhaps that's the point. Some of us will suffer more and some will suffer less through these troubling times. Perhaps we will remember the value and security that comes from voluntarily helping one another when times get tough -- fostering goodwill with your neighbour might be a good investment.
Posting anon. for a change since I don't want to disclose, even by implication, my employer.
That Wired Magazine owes you something?
I went where others feared to go and did what others failed to do.
I asked nothing from those who gave nothing,
and reluctantly accepted the thought of eternal loneliness
I have seen the face of terror,
felt the stinging cold of fear,
and enjoyed the sweet taste of a moment's love.
I have cried, pained, but most of all, ... a Soldier ...
I have lived times others would say were best forgotten.
At least someday I will be able to say I was proud of what I was
and some days I miss it.
Ron Story 75th Ranger Detachment Fire Base Barecat NW South Vietnam (on the Cambodian border, 1972)
"I asked nothing from those who gave nothing". Now I'm a pacifist and a conscientious objector but that's a soldier I can respect.
Do they owe anything to the people they dump?
Well, by law they owe you whatever they promised you in the Employee Agreement/Handbook whatever that they signed and you signed. If it doesn't guarauntee paid vacation or severance, they don't owe it to you. Like this guy. My advice to you if you have vacation and your employer hasn't signed a contract entitling you to paid vacation if you quit: take it now.
IT workers should be licensed like doctors and lawyers. Then they would get the same respect and pay. Companies know they can get a replacement IT worker from the local high school so that's the level of respect they offer.
Job security is a thing of the past. My father has been working for Siemens since before I was born (almost 40 years now) and expect a lot of senior Siemens execs at his funeral. I however have been milking the dotcom bubble for all it was worth and working as a consultant jumped from one gig to another within one year. Counting all engagements I should be up to somewhere 30 jobs within a 10 year timeframe.
However, even when the job market was good I always wondered why anyone would work for less money pushing 9 to 5, when working as a consultant was so much more lucrative. I guess some people wanted that 'feeling' of security, which, I am sorry to say, does not exist.
It's a bad, bad world out there and corporations will step over your grave to make an extra buck. Never forget that! Unless you are able to bring special value to the table and are leveraged (patents, IP, special talents), you are just another monkey busy making a few people on the top rich.
This seems to work both ways. Employeers don't owe workers very much these days. Lets face it, this generation is not going to stay at the same company for 30 years then retire (too bad, cuz damn, we sure wanted that gold watch)! The way it's going now is that you stay at a job between 1 and 3 years. No longer than that. It's a matter of money for workers. If you stay at a job, a good place will give you roughly 10% a year raise. That's nice. If you jump jobs after a year or two you can get 30% or better. Are those days over? No, not for the people who's skills are in demand. For entry level people, yes, the market REALLY sucks. For the in-demand worker, it makes sense to "jump ship" (or jump the shark!) every few years.
By law, anyone who has been drinking is "sober" until he or she "cannot hold onto the ground." Actual lexington, KY law
I work in the Silicon Valley. A number of companies here find it hard to get workers because they treated layoffs wrong. Loyalty is a two-way transaction. For example, the armed services are learning this, because there appears to be a crisis of downward loyalty (this has been written about pretty extensively). Basically top brass sacrifice their subordinates, and it's quit working. Captain-level attrition was never higher.
It's the same in industry. Some companies -always- have waiting lists. Some companies play hell getting people to come on board. There's a reason for that. Corporate, like individual, reputation has a lot to do with how willing people are to work there. And reputation, both good and bad, is pretty often earned.
In the early nineties. People with years of experience and families to feed were competing for the same entry level jobs I was looking for. I ended up putting my CS degree to use working construction. Learned a little roofing, duct work, wallboarding, and other useful tech skills.
Best Slashdot Co
There is nothing new here. Don't forget that the U.S Aerospace industry had a collapse in the late 60's, in which thousands of bright, trained and experienced engineers were summarily laid off. As for contract labor woes and job exports, this is nothing new. Let me suggest a good course in U.S. History, followed by a Labor History course, unless you wish to persist in believing the delusion that computer geeks are somehow unique and special. In the meantime, weigh the benefits of belonging to a good professional organization, such as IEEE, ACM or (?), depending upon your specialty. At least that way you can manage a benefits portfolio in your career progression from job to job. Above all, regardless of short term compensation, try to get into a field that you actually enjoy for its own sake. It's better for your health, and in the long run you might still get financially lucky.
"The layoff used to only happen for the working class?" Excuse me? Katz seems to have forgotten the last, oh I don't know, THIRTY years of recessions. A lot of industries moved out of the US (for example) taking MANY of their research groups with them. Hell, I should know. My family lives in the Akron OH area. Layoffs happened to Katz's Technical Elite about 11 years ago when all the rubber companies abandoned ship. This has happened all over. The automobile industry, the aerospace industry. Katz should try to get into his vapid head that a lot of engineers are End Users.
What is music when you despise all sound?
The company that I worked for just closed their St. Louis office and probably 50-100 people got axed. Well, anyone that was there for 1 month or more got 1 month's worth of severence pay. Now that sounds like a company willing to help out those that they killed. I wasn't one of them, but I think that would be a step in the right direction if I were.
Yeah, Katz, you're saying that now, but weren't you talking not long ago about the New Economy and how it would change everything?
sulli
RTFJ.
I used to work at one of those great dot coms with lots of low priced options. After the IT staff was cut from 25 poeple to 5 I decided I didn't want to stick around any longer. We all asked for some signs of job security to no avail. When it was all said and done and I left for a stable opportunity elsewhere. Management was in shock that poeple would actually leave when the company was at such a critical stage. It woke them up and my ex-coworkers tell me that the job security is changing with written promises of advanced warning of layoffs etc.
Probably not the case everywhere but if the employees shock management enough to the point that their systems are not functioning because the only poeple with the proper skill set to manage those systems left because of disgust for the company. They *might* listen. I just feel better that those poeple I worked with and their families can sleep a little more sound (not to mention way more money for me!)
- Josh
insert clever or comical sig here
Your just jealous because I hear the voices
Not knowing Jon Katz' history. Has he ever worked for a company such as QWest ?
There is a financial reality here. Companies have to make money. Is it not equally immoral to keep everyone on payroll, at the expense of one's debtors ?
Certainly, there are some nasty companies out there. I know, I've worked for some of them. But the reality is that the "gold watch" methaphor was a short lived creature of the mid 20th century. Well, there were those friends of royalty who worked for life a particular despot, until their boss was deposed. At which point, their contract, along with their lives were usually terminated. That, or slavery.
While I wish loyalty was valued more by both employer and employee, the reality is that jobs are just that, jobs.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
If you are looking for work in the private sector (corporations) a Ph.D. is a complete waste. Salary studies consistently show that people in tech jobs with a tech bachelor's and an MBA earn roughly twice as much as PhD's. People with Tech Masters come in a close second.
People with PhDs in Tech jobs average somewhere between high school graduates and college dropouts in salary. Yes there are excpetions, but as a rule a Masters degree is the top of the line.
Remeber the old sayings about PhD? Piled Higher and Deeper; and Someone who knows more and more about less and less.
Chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
This thinking came because of the reverse...
Most companies haven't been thinking in terms of engendering employee loyalty for well over a decade now. I know, I've been in two of the downturns in the economy now- they (corporations) tend only to think of that bottom line. And worse, they think of it in only short-term thoughts. All this bloodletting they're doing to their staff makes them look good on paper, but they just got rid of at least part of the people that were needed to make their projects they have in progress go- they're butchering their medium-term and possibly their long-term profitability to look good in the here and now.
This all came about from the last downturn in the economy some ten years ago when there were...wait for it...mass layoffs not unlike now, etc. The companies showed absolutely no loyalty then- why should the employees show them any loyalty when they're going to keep doing it over and over and over...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Jon, if someone wants a severance package, they should negotiate for it. If your employer values you so little that they won't give you severance, then you should take that as a hint that you may be let go at any moment, and you should live your life and work at your job accordingly.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I found this post ironic because in the last few years many tech workers have enjoyed an ability to switch from job to job, garnering raises and promotions on the way. Employee mobility, especially in the tech sector, has been higher in the last 3-4 years than it probably has ever been. This, I would expect most readers here would agree, is a Good Thing.
But I wonder, don't "job security" and "employee loyalty" go hand in hand ? Sure, employees will be more loyal to companies that offer the kinds of perks Katz talks about, but aren't companies also more likely offer those kinds of perks if they had some reason to believe their employees would show them loyalty ? How, in this time of unprecedented worker mobility, can we fairly expect companies to extend things like 3-6 months termination notice when companies probably would be derided for expecting 3-6 months of notice when one of their employees decided to leave for greener pastures ?
In short, what kind of responsibilities ought we have to our employers ? Is it reasonable to expect that companies should be any less self-interested than we workers are ?
Interestingly, I just got off the phone with an IT recruiter who may have a solution. His recommendation to me was to do what he called a 4/3 contract work week. The idea is to fly to a client site, code for 4 days(pay is hourly), and then return home and enjoy a 3-day weekend. Apparently this is becoming popular for employers and employees alike.
;). Extending this thought even further...I realized that with this kind of work, a person could live in regions that were almost impossible before (due to the restrictions of a traffic commute). Because, I'm only _driving_ to work twice a week. To and from the airport.
Now, most of you, like I did, are probably saying "nope, I wanna stay in the same place". But then I asked myself why? If I do end up finding work here(metro Atlanta) I'll be spending nearly 2 hours a day in traffic, coming home exhausted, watching TV, and going to sleep. 5 days a week.
OR
I could do the exact same thing, for only 4 days. And probably without the traffic(most of these contracts are not in downtown traffic messes like ATL). And then, I get to have a 3 day weekend
So, hypothetically I could live in some beautiful forested small town, (like Helen GA), and still make as much as if I had a full-time gig downtown. What that means is, with what I'd be spending in rent for a studio apt in Atlanta($1000/mo?). I could probably put toward a morgage payment in my nice rustic setting(where the cost of living is nearly half what it is downtown).
All of this without the commute from hell, without the obnoxious city people, and without the boredom that comes with going to work at the same place day after day, year after year, with 15 days vacation.
imho, contracting is really looking good.
In the DC area we're getting tens of thousands of layoffs, but tech workers, especially those with clearances, are doing well. It's the airport/airline/hotel/restaurant workers who're getting screwed. You've got people who didn't make much to begin with being laid off and unable to find any jobs, not even minimum wage. On the other end of the scale airline pilots with $200,000/year salaries and $500,000 mortgages are getting pink slips.
Best Slashdot Co
if corporate reorganizing has shown anything - it's the value of contract workers.
contractors don't care much for corporate loyalty or security, as canceled contracts have termination clauses that are agreed upon at the outset by both parties.
i think what we'll see as the information age settles into an optimal pattern is that contracting firms will grow increasingly popular to large corporations. these firms will encapsulate a group of people who work well together with perhaps specialties.
this may facilitate a greater focus on tech workers and their abilities, but i doubt to the programmers-as-rock-stars hype level that the bubble promised.
of course contractors undoubtedly charge more than a corporation would pay for direct work. but the value of the corporations has always been their assets, their management, their (intellectual) property, and their brands. they succeed regardless of individual workers within them. they can hire a dozen contracting teams to work on a dozen products this year, and next year they don't have to worry about what to assign them to. their production can expand and contract much more naturally with the market. and these contractions will have less effect.
employees i believe will tend more toward these shops. a small contract group has more loyalty to workers, is by definition a flatter organization, and much more closely tied to employees.
granted this theory applies to large corporations - the nortels, the big three, the boeings, et al. small flexible mobile companies will grow and die as they always have. dependant on the drive, timliness, and accuracy of their team, vision, and product.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
GenY has a golden 90s decade: no war and employers
begging to hire them. Then tables turn 180-degrees
on them with massive dot-bomb layoffs and potential war.
We, your older brothers and parents tried to
give you a good life. But bad things happen, so suck
up to it and stop whining.
In the US, the average person has 7 different jobs in his life. In Germany, the average is not much above 1. For example, my father always was a physicist, my mother always a teacher, and I will probably always be a sw developer.
But it is true in Germany/Europe as well that the thinking becomes ever more short term.
I see "real" reasons for the dot com crash, for example no buisiness plans and too little consumer spending via the internet.
But IMHO purely due to psychologic reasons many excellent people are fired as well in healthy industries (for ex. game development). Probably in a few years they will massively hire again. But lots of people have to move, have to "get dialed" into new working surroundings and new problems etc. I can't help but think that this is not the most economic way to do things.
Being Part of both a good layoff plan and a bad layoff plan. I think it all comes down to how I look at employment in the future. I was both dot-bombed, and government hand shook away. And I much prefer the golden handshake of 6-8 weeks virtual employment while I looked for a job
Friends and I who got the "your laid off, and you get the rest of the day paid", plan makes us much more picky when choosing new employment. My skills are up to date, so now when I got my present job, I asked questions in the interview like.
Have you ever (coporate HR) laid people off, what kind of benefits are you talking about when you get rid of people. Boy that throws them for a loop.
What kind of notice do you give before laying someone off, is it "our product wasn't accepted at a trade show" or "we have lost money for the last 2 quaters".
Did you lose money in the last 2 quarters( good follow-up".
Have you ever made a profit, or a product (good for dot-coms)
Given that they are going to lie a little, at least you have a good idea where most of them stand. Does this make me risk adverse, well maybe a little, but at least I know what I am getting into.
If I wanted loyality I'd get a dog. A job is a job, I can find anouther one next week. McDonalds would love to have me, and would start me at $40k/year with binifits if I applied. (I happen to know the folks to ask, but anyone willing to work hard can be up to that wage in a year of hard work if you go management) Welders are in great demand now. It seems there are never enough doctors, and the baby boomers aren't getting healthier.
Sure some of the above need training I don't have, but don't tell me I should be layal to my currnet job, I'm not, and I don't expect the same out of them. I work for money. Find me a job I can do for more money (remember both short and long term I can't be paid next year no matter how much money it is, and getting killed isn't worth a lot of money)
It is a job, not my life. I don't want to work in the same place for years. A lay-off isn't the nicest way to end employment, but it isn't the worst either. I can do any job you can think of. i'd hate some (management), I'd need a lot of schooling for others (medical doctor), and I'd suck horridly at others (novel writer, sports), but I could do it. Some days I'd give up my computer job to clean septic tanks in -40 tempatures. Other days I love my comptuer job.
[Bitter rant on]
I came into the job market in the mid 80's. Most Slashdotter's parents were ensconced in middle/upper management. NO jobs, LOTS of layoffs and bugger all security. You want to know why your situation sucks? Ask mummy and daddy.
[Bitter rant off]
that legislating job security also has real costs to employees, employers, and shareholders. Put bluntly, the harder you make it to let go of an employee, the harder it is for a company to hire an employee. If a company can't let go of an employee when it is no longer economically feasible, they'll think twice about hiring. Whatever benefit you gain by being able to produce marginally more units (or services) can be easily overwhelmed by having to carry a lot of deadweight around during a slump (it comes right off your bottom line). This inefficiency also inevitably ends up hitting consumers, which are employees themselves. Translation: It reduces the employees buying power.
You want job security? Prepare for a significantly more stagnant economy.
I would argue that many of the jobs lost in the US are jobs that may well have NEVER have been created in countries with socialist leanings. You want to talk about unemployment? Checkout those countries with such protections, they tend to be FAR higher than the US on the aggregate.
Employment in the US has always been "at-will" unless modified by labor or other contracts.
Employers and employees have, in the past, treated it differently because it made (and still makes) sense to do so -- at least for companies that expect to be around for more than another year.
I worked at one company that was in a spiral towards bankruptcy. After several layoffs, a number of good people remained who believed in the products being developed. By the time I got laid off, no severance package of any kind was offered. My last day of pay was also my last day of health insurance.
After that layoff, key developers for their new product all left. A quick re-calculation of the company's actions made the risks suddenly unacceptable.
I'm not sure that the new product ever got developed. I do know that the company went bankrupt and its assets were bought out by someone who is marketing the old product without the debt of the old company. They may even have found someone with the know-how to bring the new product (an NT version of a product running on AS/400 and Unix) to market.
Not that it would do the original company any good.
Here's how I see it as a tech worker that recently found work after trying all the normal avenues:
/. person? (for lack of a better example)
I don't want job security THAT much. If I am busy and getting paid what I am worth, I will be happy.
Most of the time, I will get bored with your company and move on when another opportunity arrives because of:
a) Dumb company practices, policies.
b) Clueless managers.
c) Clueless coworkers that make my job 2x harder.
I totally do nothing but contract work now with some friends with our own small LLC run out of a basements and cell phones. We literally walk into office buildings and go to individual companies and ask if they need something done. We do it until it's done, and get paid.
If they like the work, They owe me nothing, I owe them nothing. I move on to next company. Rinse and Repeat as often as necessary. Simple business transaction. And its not like there is a shortage of work.
Around here (Troy,MI) there are tons of businesses that need IT work done, and are willing to pay for it, yet all these IT companies are going under and laying people off, and you know what? Most of them are clueless "tech workers" with either no skills, or deadends. It does suck for them. I'm sorry that they decided to only learn FORTRAN because it made them good money at the time and demand is now down so they get laid off. I'm sorry that you only know VBScript, it's not going to get the servers/firewall up, NBX working, and database running. How many "tech workers" do you know that actually LOVE tech and learning the stuff as much as the average
If you need work, link up with a few friends and do it freelance at night/weekends. If you are smart and know your shit, you're going to get it done twice as fast as some 'solutions' company and get paid directly without hassle. Use the benfits of an LLC to negotiate a good health care plance. A few friends of mine were laid off when a IT firm went under, they all got together and contract themselves as a team, and now they have TOO much work...
Everyone might say "the tech sector is down", but AFAIK, people still need to use computers to conduct business - We all are still working in the trenches getting work done for people while HP/Compaq and others are walking around with their heads up their asses....
... until it's their job.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
They are both .coms, and won't pay me what they still owe me.
But if I go after them for it, I'd have bad references.
So, what to do?
How can you expect to build a winning business practice when your top guy isn't around long enough to have his name painted in his parking space?
In the 70s a sign went up on I-90 leading out of town: "Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights". Some 35,000 people including mechanics, technicians, engineers, and managers were laid off from just one company (Boeing) and many of them moved away. Housing prices plummeted; you could get a house for the $25 it cost to file a Quit-Claim deed and take over someone's payments.
Boeing survived *because* they laid off workers in a time of severe business downturn. The survived to hire back people to fill those 35,000 jobs and more besides. The Seattle area diversified and became less dependent on one company for its economic well-being.
Increasing benefits to laid-off workers will only cause more workers - who would have kept their jobs under different rules - to be laid off. If business declines, companies must adjust to the new business. Or fail.
This has nothing to do with greedy shareholders demanding more profits. Take a look at the economy, Jon, and you will see that there are no profits out there right now for most companies. It has to do with survival of the company.
Uh oh, no more time to preach to Katz... the clue train is coming and he doesn't want to miss it again.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I highly recommend instead looking at refactoring employment arrangement. Strip off all "benefits" such as health insurance, life insurance, etc. and make an independent of employment status. Personally, I would take it as far as for forbidding employers from providing health insurance etc. to employees.
The relationship between employer and employee should strictly be a cash for service basis.
The same time, the tax code should reward people for doing the right thing such as purchasing health insurance, creating unemployment savings etc. by making those expenses tax deductions.
as for termination notices, companies should notify people with as much leadtime as possible but there is an issue of motivation of the folks knowing that their employment is coming to an end.
Be a contractor. Contractors have great resumes (lots of idfferent experience), get paid more than enough to just buy health insurance outright, and still sock away plenty, and don't have to sweat layoffs. There hasn't been any sense of 'moral' obligation to employees in many years, and smart employees have no moral obligations to their employers. I wonder where Jon Katz has been all this time.
So the hperactive free market of technology has
a serious downturn. Now Katz whines and wants a
socialist hand-holding fix. No one takes responsibility
for their actions anymore.
They were gambling on a merger occuring. But what they don't understand is this: They think they were gambling with the corporate assets, they wern't. By hiring me without being able to pay me they were gambling with MY house, MY mortgage, MY ability to pay my bills and continue my life.
When companies care so little about ethics that they would jeopordize their employees homes with their lies it seems that asking for maximum notice of layoffs, 6 months of insurance and so on is just a fantasy.
I'm not pro union, but I do think that legal action should be taken against the worse offenders. However, that brings us to another problem. Who do you sue if the company has no assets any more? If a company goes from a nice office downtown to working out of the CTO's guest house in a few weeks then how is sueing them out of existence going to teach anyone a lesson?
So before we worry too much about morality during layoffs I'd like companies to worry more about morality during employment.
Continuing health benefits? Those health benefits from CORBA aren't cheap. I think the estimate for continuing my benefits was on the order of $500 per month. Out of my pocket. So who's going to pay for those benefits? The laid off employee? Maybe some could -- I took my chances for a month until my next job's benefits were available. I doubt many jobless workers could afford it for long. The company? That's reasonable, but I doubt it'll happen. Cost is simply too high.
The real solution would be for companies to take a longer view. In the last four years I've worked for or at companies that had policies toword employees that didn't simply make sense. Those policies harmed the employees, and harmed the company in terms of losing good, knowledgable, and productive employees.
When companies stop looking at their employees as an easily replacable commodity, both they and the employees will be better off.
Sean.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/29/ch23.html#PC 23 will tell you a lot. Such as why companies dribble layoffs instead of letting everyone go at once, even when the executives know that's what they'll end up doing.
US Code as of: 01/23/00 CHAPTER 23 - WORKER ADJUSTMENT AND RETRAINING NOTIFICATIONSee also http://www.ibmemployee.com/ for some insight into retirement benefits.
-- 3.14159
examples please?
I believe that this is just one aspect of a very frightening shift of accountability and responsibility in the United States that has occured over the past 120 years. Abraham Lincoln once said that this "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." Well, we've proven him wrong. The US is a government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation.
Look, for example, at the Anti-Terrorism Act that would make hacking a terrorist act, punishable by life in prison and subject to RICO statutes. I'm not going to claim any support for hacking, but there is something fundamentally wrong with a nation where financial crimes against a corporation are considered far more serious that violent crime against an individual, yet corporations cannot be held criminally responsible for their actions. If you break in and deface Union Carbide's web site, you could have all of your possessions seized just on suspicion, and spend the rest of your life in prison if convincted. When they killed thousands of people in Bhopal, they got a slap on the wrist.
This situation is nobody's fault, and yet everybody's failing. Our governent is based on popular support, and the will of the people. The way our politicians gauge such support is based on who they hear from, and what they hear. They hear from individuals, and lobbying groups that represent individuals. And under modern US law, corporations are very large and very powerful people, capable of shouting far louder than anyone else.
Abraham Lincoln also said, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- President Abraham Lincoln, letter to William F. Elkins, Nov 21, 1864 (from The Lincoln Encyclopedia [MacMillan, 1950]) (Quote reference thanks to Hank Kalet)
Where do you want to go today?
Looks like someone is trying very hard to overcome their secret lust for Katz.
At the height of the dot.com, workers weren't exactly ticking to their jobs to help the company prosper,
except in the cases of golden handcuffs (long term stock options).
Now they expect these companies to all the sudden reward them with generous severances.
What good for the goose is good for the gander.
Any entity that has "free will", whatever that may be, has , by definition, moral obligations associated with it's actions. The entity can be an individual, institution, corporation, nation etc. Any thing that makes conscious decisions hears responsibility for it's activity.
There seems to be an almost unconscious and unquestioned attitude that persons are to be held accountable but large organizations are exempt from the usual moral considerations that apply to individuals. Corporations have a different and restricted type of morality. Corporations, with the sole obligation to make money for share holders, must respond to the "market forces" which is, after all, all thay are supposed to do in a "free market".
I don't see the problem.
"Do they owe anything to the people they dump? "
Sure, they owe what the contract promised, no more no less.
Corporations' disregard for their employees is equal to employees' disregard for their employers. Should companies give 3-6 months warning of layoffs? Why the hell should they? How many employees have to give that much notice if they feel like leaving?
Sure, people (including me) can lose a job at short notice. But, we can get a job at short notice. Even 15 years ago, if you left a job voluntarily for no reason better than to have 6 months unpaid chilling out with your family, it would make you unemployable in the eyes of many. Now, you are free to do that kind of thing.
Employees have far more information about the companies they join and work for. They are far more able to determine their employer's health for themselves. They have much better access to their managers. No more big boss on the top floor with the oak desk; most managers, while just as focussed on the bottom line, are far more approachable and forthcoming.
These days, few people would want to go back to the old paternalistic model. The quick hire quick fire culture was spawned as much by tech workers jumping for better pay every 12 months as it was by businesses jiggling their structures every 12 months.
It's the modern world, deal with it.
-----
"Workers have never been more powerless, their tenure more fragile."
That's an out and out lie.
Workers during the start of the Industrial Revolution and up to the 1920s had no rights. No sick leave, no family leave, no workman's comp, no ergonomics, no disability, no insurance, no prevailing wage, no holiday time. Layoffs came with no advanced warning, heck back then you couldn't even have the warning of knowing what the stock price was doing.
There were no labor relations boards, no legal recourse, no comp time...nothing but the punch-clock and the 5 o'clock whistle, and the knowledge that if you didn't go in the next day there were 5 or 10 immigrants fresh off the boat or train waiting to take your job.
Again Katz has forgot that there was a world before 1990 and he ignores history. People have it good now compared to one hundred years ago, a fact that Labor Unions lament as thier Union rolls decrease.
In the salad days, when you signed on to a company, you made sure your contract had vacation, salary, bonus etc... in writing. Maybe you still do, but your negotiation leverage is crap right now. If technical demand regains parity and the corperations still want to be able to layoff at a moments notice, I'll be asking for a severance clause in my next contract. Say ... remaining vacation + 4 weeks + 1 week for every year of service. Maybe something like 8 weeks min if they've layed off in the last 3-6 months.
It should be effective at time of signing, not 1st day on the job; they could cancel after you've quit but before you've started!
It is within my lifetime (and I'm only in my 30s) that people were still getting Gold Watches for 50 years of service in a company. If there is a single person of my generation, or younger, who actually remains in work for 50 years, never mind with the same company, I would be amazed.
Jobs have become disposable. And like disposable napkins, they get dumped more with an eye to being rid of them than anything.
Job security has become a joke. Corporations, not Government, dominate the political and legal scenes. Benefits packages have gone from being incentives to whatever the company can get away with. "Fat Cat" bosses get the cream, the workers get the bill.
This was demonstrated in England, about 5 or 6 years ago, during a particularly nasty drought. Yorkshire Water hadn't any. They were trucking emergency supplies in, daily, just to cover the barest essentials of the populace. When rain did fall, it "fell in the wrong areas". The meagre supplies that existed were being lost. 33% of the water was lost, as ancient piping fractured, with negligable maintenance to repair it.
Despite this state of affairs, the CEO of Yorkshire Water awarded himself something like 450,000 pounds (about $800,000) bonus, on top of a hefty pay-rise. Employees were lucky, if they got more than insults from those affected by the drought.
This wasn't an isolated incident, though it did force the British Parliament to consider legislation to prevent senior managers in corporations from soaking up the profits in this way. Never really came to much, though, despite a massive public backlash.
In America, with unions as corrupt as the companies they vie against, there is nobody looking out for the little guys - the ones who actually do the work that allow the company to exist.
Yes, Unions are as much to blame as the CEOs. Unions were initially formed in Britain as a cross between health insurance, unemployment benefits, scam prevention, and health & safety inspection, back in the 1600's. In Britain, at least some have remained fairly true to that vision.
In America, though, it's a different story. Unions have become monsters; frightening distortions of the common-welfare organizations from which they were born. They protect their income, not their members, and instead of curbing the excesses of the corporations, they feed off it. By now, we should have seen a worker uprising against the abuses that are common in the workplace. We haven't. Nor will we. In an environment where back-stabbing is the quickest way to the top, and an expectation of a fair day's wage for a fair day's work is the quickest way out the door, there is nobody willing to stand up on their own. And with nobody backing them, there's no reason for anybody to change their minds.
Monopolies, such as Microsoft's, should be impossible, as employees in different companies put their loyalty in their fellow workers, forcing the conflicting sides to work peacably together, not work to destroy each other. But it's not happening.
Why?
Because not only do companies erode benefits, where possible, and reward employees with festering paranoia, but they also oppose any who stand up to them.
If worker A gets fired, for opposing abuse in the workplace, you're not going to see them get hired by a rival firm. Too risky! This guy's a trouble-maker! Whistle-blowers face a life of being unemployed and unemployable. And, in the ever-tighter restrictions on welfare, the best they can hope for is a room in Cardboard City.
Where are the protests against this inhuman treatment? Where is the Civil Rights Movement, when civil rights in the one place you spend most of your waking hours barely exist at all? Where are the heros of the Working Class?
They don't exist. The average American has long been convinced that people on welfare are scum, unworthy of another thought. Since these are the very people who have most to protest about, America is deaf to their cause and needs. Worse, with a certain George Bush putting his hand in the welfare jar, to pay for his tax cuts & other assorted voter bribes, the voters - the Americans who matter to the politicians - will remain silent.
What does that leave us? Not a whole lot. An article by Jon Katz, a few objections by Slashdotters, but that's all we'll ever see.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Welcome to the Harvard School of Business. Where the share holder, not the customer, is always right. Where "Employees are our most important expendable asset" is the rule of thumb. Where layoffs are the shortcut to profitability and big returns in stock options and bonuses for CEO's.
Face the facts people!
Employees are a comodity. They are subject to the law of supply and demand.
When demand is high and supply is low, our value rises.
With Low demand and a high supply, our value plummets.
You know, High School Economics Class! Or did you sleep through that too!
Stop yer bitchn! Develop a new skill thats in demand and go back to work!
That is the new way of things!
We've gotton a bit lazy with the economy being a little too good!"People need reset buttons"
Worked for a company doing their web server admin (Apache, etc). They went tits up (not my fault). Head man said: "Look. I can't pay you. But I can give you equipment." I got an Alpha workstation and a SGI Indy. EBayed 'em and got my money back x 2. I'm happy. He's happy.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
The decision to cut employees from a company is always not a very palatable issue for those who get to make the decision. I'm sure many get sleepless nights before and after making one. I've read somewhere this even ranks high among the causes of heart attacks in executives who need to make these decisions.
Layoffs however needs to be balanced against the realities of survival for the company. In other words, its a sacrifice of the few versus the good of many (hopefully). I know because I was there before and its not an easy task to be looking at your team and analyzing who should remain and who should go. I was not even sure if I would also be included myself in the rationalization of pisitions.
In these situations it is always better to do your utmost in your job because surely your boss will be able to notice this against others on your team. You can make a rational analysis too of your skills and capabilities as against other members of your team or the company's direction itself. Before anything else create your own "golden parachute" and jump before the ship goes on a nosedive.
$0.02
Return the bells of Balangiga.
While I agree that the idea that workers are 'entitled' to something after poaring their souls into a company is a GREAT idea, mandating this by law is a little overboard I think.
The entire notion that workers are 'entitled' to anything is just wrong. A company needs work done. It pays people cash in exchange for completing that work. PERIOD. You want more then that? Work for yourself. Easy enough..
I mean, what if you hired a painter to paint your house. He finishes, but when hes done, suddenly demand that you pay him an extra 50%.
When theres no work to be done, then the workers arent needed. So they have to find something else to do. If a company takes CARE of its employees, the benifits will be apperent. Treat them like dirt, and you dont attract good workers. Unions are, in reality, simply a company whos sole job is to hold companies ransom, using their workers as hostages. Ok, this sounds harsh, but really, thats what it is. THEY ARE A GOOD THING. If workers choose to go it by themselves, then great. They have the right to leave whenever they wish, JUST like the company has the right to say We dont NEED you anymore.
If we DO end up going down that road, then we might as well just say everyone works, and the government 'issues' them moneys. Instead of companies charging for items, the government places a fair price on things. This is what we're going to if we start mandating that workers are entitled to something other then fair pay.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Both sides are to blame for the current situation. During the boom period tech workers would jump to any job which would pay them more. Companies loaded up on un-necessary tech staff as there seem to be an impending shortage of skilled workers. The boom created a glut of semi-skilled people who went into the tech sector looking for nothing but a fat paycheck. Many of these people don't even have computers in their homes. Now that times are not so good these people have to go. The worst situation is to have unionized tech workers. You end up with overpaid, under skilled, workers who do minimal work with out fear of being let go.
When I worked for larger corporations (>10000 employees) and spoke of expanding the organization, the question was always what would we do with these people should the program go away or once the program is complete? There was always the concern of getting into the position where we would have to lay someone off simply because we had nothing for them to do anymore.
In the dot-bomb economy, however, companies are more concerned in getting the product to market ASAP and expand rapidly, hiring many more people than they actually need (cf. The Mythical Man Month) without any concern, really, as to what is to happen to these people once they get product to market.
They seem to view people as a commodity (which is sorta true), but completely ignore the fact that they're dicking with peoples' lives. In a contract situtation it is understood that it can end at any moment, so prepare for that. But when one accepts a position, even though it is at-will, the employer has the responsbility to do everything in their power to ensure that employment continues.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
I believe they owe the party who was let go every cent they worked. I was not on salary...paid monthly still havent seen june or july paychecks. I'm not going to release the name of the company yet, figure I'll let the better buisness bureau do what they can.
Way back when, Henry Ford paid his workers well (relatively speaking), provided housing, schools for their children, loans, etc. He even once went to the wall to pay his workers bonuses instead of giving dividends to shareholders (sadly, the shareholders sued and won in court).
In general, however, people did not like the way Ford ran things. They felt that it was patronizing and condescending. It allowed Ford to excersize excessive control over employees' private lives and he could not resist the temptation. When you ask your employer to play parent, they will.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Today, the deal is "do your work, get paid." It's a fairly simple deal and most people understand it. Hoping for a fat severence equivalent to several months salary is understandable, but the associated costs are so high that even more people would be laid off if a company chose that option.
Layoffs are hard, both for those let go and those who remain, but it is a fact of life and I don't see how being bitter can be of any help. Instead, true professionals will keep on top of the changes in the industry and learn what is necessary to stay competative. This threat of failure is what forces both companys and individuals to constantly improve. And that improvement will, in the long run, lead to a better life for everyone.
In short, life is hard and it will only get harder. Thank god -- because if life were easy, we'd all be living in sod shacks worrying if there's enough food to stay alive during the coming winter.
Cheers,
Rob
Morals and Layoffs[ United States ]Posted by JonKatz on Tuesday September 25, @09:45AM
from the do-they-owe-you-anything dept.
Technology is the momma of the modern workplace, its creator, from the Industrial Revolution to the blessedly short-lived dot.com era. It has re-shaped work, making it cleaner, more mobile and flexible, safer -- but much less secure. Jobs now change as often as the market fluctuates, as mergers and takeovers shift the landscape, as the market bumps up and down, as marketing tracks our desires and dislikes, needs and whims. Technology makes it possible for companies to shift jobs all over the world, and redefine themselves in weeks and months. Qwest tossed 4,000 workers two weeks ago. The very idea of job security seems a casualty of the tech-driven global economy, with its continuous down-sizing, changing ownership and management goals, lateral strategies and evolving needs. Now we add terrorist attacks and a recession. The new corporate work ethic is change -- measured, defined and executed by corporate hierarchies. Do they owe anything to the people they dump?
Radical changes in modern institutional structure have ushered in an era of short-term, contract, or episodic labor, writes economist Richard Sennett in his book The Corrosion of Character. Corporations have sought to remove layers of bureaucracy, to become "flatter and more flexible" organizations. In place of pyramid-style organizations, management wants now to think of organizations as networks. This means many more layoffs, writes Sennett, and also that promotions and dismissals tend not to be based any longer on fixed rules, since tasks are fluid, and the network is constantly redefining its structure.
Executives are paid more and more to re-shape companies, and work becomes less stable in direct proportion. Workers have never been more powerless, their tenure more fragile. Tech workers, many of whom came of age in an era of growth and full employment, are learning the lessons of the real world quickly. Tasks and missions are temporal, the people employed to execute them highly disposable. Work and workers are both flexible and expendable.
One of the most shocking and widely accepted tenets of the new techno-workplace is that the well-run company, the one that wants to compete in the global economy, has to be so fluid, evolving and responsive to change that thousands of employees can get dumped at one whack and it's not even controversial. That's a pretty long trek from the capitalist ethic that only a few years ago valued corporate loyalty as much as profits, and touted the company-employee bond.
And it raises all sorts of new questions -- especially for a generation of tech workers experiencing layoffs for the first time.
In the Corporate Republic, where corporations fund the political system, control most mass media, write legislation, and now dominate entertainment and culture (and soon, much of technology, from bio-tech to Net access), there are few agreed-upon rules about layoffs. Hardly any would get far in Washington, the world headquarters of corporate lobbying. (Congress, allegedly the public's lobbyists, are scrambling to get campaign funds from corporate donors.)
Unions, already on the wane, have never gained much hold in the Tech Nation, populated by educated, mobile, skilled and independent-minded workers. Some tech companies are comparatively generous -- extending health plans beyond the federal requirements with some benefits extending past a layoff date.
Cisco has offered to pay its laid-off workers for an additional year if they work for charities the company supports. It's nice, but it isn't the same as job security. And even that kind of moral responsibility is rare.
Under COBRA (The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) passed by Congress in l985, some laid-off or terminated workers (those fired for reasons other than gross misconduct) are entitled to continuation of health benefits for extended periods of time. COBRA doesn't cover companies with fewer than 20 employees, and it doesn't cover all workers terminated under all circumstances. If the company goes bankrupt, for example, COBRA doesn't apply at all. You have to check and see if you're eligible.)
COBRA, my ass. When I got laid off earlier this year I found out I could keep my health benefits for slightly more than my rent, paid every month.
Oh, and I'm single. That's not even for the "family plan," which was a good _double_ my half of the rent.
Somehow, this doesn't seem like a terribly helpful program to the typical tech worker who's been dropped like a used tampon or a worn out dream.
--saint
(Dammit -- mod the other one down. That's what I get for posting from unfamiliar machines and not using preview)
Under COBRA (The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) passed by Congress in l985, some laid-off or terminated workers (those fired for reasons other than gross misconduct) are entitled to continuation of health benefits for extended periods of time. COBRA doesn't cover companies with fewer than 20 employees, and it doesn't cover all workers terminated under all circumstances. If the company goes bankrupt, for example, COBRA doesn't apply at all. You have to check and see if you're eligible.)
COBRA, my ass. When I got laid off earlier this year I found out I could keep my health benefits for slightly more than my rent, paid every month.
Oh, and I'm single. That's not even for the "family plan," which was a good _double_ my half of the rent.
Somehow, this doesn't seem like a terribly helpful program to the typical tech worker who's been dropped like a used tampon or a worn out dream.
--saint
What everyone seems to be missing in all the layoff paranoia is the same thing that makes it easy for a company to hire you, makes it easy for them to fire you. America has a very dynamic work force. They transition jobs very quickly. What this means is that jobs are almost continually being created and destroyed. A company can feel free to hire a bunch of people in hopes the demand will be there, because they know if the demand isn't there, they can fire them. Compare this with Europe, where layoffs are extremely discourged by the governments. You have less jobs created, because they know that once they hire people it is extremely hard to fire them. This is what causes the American economy to creat more jobs than most other economies. That is why the American unemployment is typically lower than other countries. So as we lament the ability of companies to lay off American employees, let's not forget that that same ability is what got a large portion of those employees hired in the first place.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
In the best of times, of course companies hire. In the worst of times, the only reason a company will hire is if they know they can fire them just as quickly.
That being said, most companies realize that when they hire again, people will remember how they were treated. So unless it is a dire emergency, most (larger) companies will give some sort of package.
"Love is never saying you're too proud." -Tonic
Some possibilities:
Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way.
Continued health benefits. Employment used to be a contract: you worked hard for the company, the company took reasonable care of you. Employees who have been with a corporation any length of time at all -- I'd say six months -- ought to keep their health benefits until they find new work, a guarantee not even COBRA provides.
Innovative responses. The layoff has become almost a corporate reflex, a statement to analysts, boards of directors and stockholders that management is lean and mean. When the market drops, capital gets squeezed,or takeovers occur, employment gets slashed. This often seems short-sighted. Tech workers are skilled and valuable. It's difficult to predict the nature of technology, and of consumer attitudes towards technological products and innovation. People laid off today might be urgently needed in six months. Shouldn't they at least have a chance to come up with other tasks, products, functions or ideas before they're booted out?
This would be best done in a collective bargaining situtation which is almost non-existant in the IT sector.
Plenty of professionals have unions (teachers,professors, nurses for example). There is no way this would pass into a law without being so watered down as to be completely ineffective. Don't like the idea of unions? Then maybe you might want to give up your weekend and 8 hour work day, without unions we'd have neither of those.
Yes, its hard to save, but forgoing a new PC or a few DVDs here and there can keep you living the way you are accustomed to when the shit hits the fan.
Companies do have an incentive to treat laid-off employees with respect: loyalty and morale.
Compare the morale at a company that just laid off 1000 workers with no severence package and was ignorant to the people to a company that did it "right", with generous severence packages and compassionate managers. The first one will end up losing good workers, because they will feel that they will be treated like trash, just like the people just laid off. Many good people will stay at the second company, because they feel that they will be respected and treated fairly. And they really won't even fear for their jobs, because they know that if they get laid off in a next round, it won't have too large of a financial impact.
Loyalty must be earned. And it does have an impact on the quality of the work that gets done.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Right now, I'd be not so sure whether the aerospace sector would be that much better than the "dot bomb" business...
Once you find a new position, file a complaint with the federal labor board. The statute of limitations for a claim is 2 years. If you have evidence that the money is owed to you, you can get paid what is owed plus penalties.
If the employee doesn't feel a sense of loyalty to the company, why should the company be criticized for not having loyalty to the employee?
The 90's were marked by workers hopping from one dot-com to another with remarkable speed, in search of a better deal. Headhunters were ruthless in grabbing workers, sometimes snagging them from the same company they placed them with as soon as the 'no-touch' period was over.
Where were the moralists when the shoe was on the other foot? They were silent, and the overwhelming response was positive towards a culture in which employees were free to pursue the best options available to them without guilt or recrimination.
And yet, Mr. Katz would have us believe that the worker is powerless before the "Corporate Republic". This same worker that drove companies into a frenzy to try to woo him during the boom, is now powerless when we slip into a recession.
Business is cyclical, and at the bottom of a cycle, jobs are hard to find, and companies layoff people as part of cost cutting. That's reality. It's the other side of the coin that gave us massive salaries and stock options, and record low unemployment.
The fact is, most people who are getting laid off are finding other work. The churn is going up, but the overall unemployment figures are staying pretty stable. Yes, if you had an inflated position, and were hired because you knew how to spell 'computer' in the midst of the boom, you're going to have some problems. But if you kept your skills up, the jobs are out there. Hell, my company's hiring people right now.
Loyalty appears to be on the decline, but on both sides of this issue, which would probably make for a more boring, though relevant, story. Way to take the high road Jon.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...been on both sides...
You know what? When doing restructuring or cost trimming, companies around here actually make a strong effort not to fire anyone - they cut costs with equipment and maintenance, they re-train employees, they shift people from one place to another in the structure instead of firing in one side and hiring on the other side.
For most companies it all boils down to a question of "What is cheaper?", and when the firing of someone is a very expensive option, things like re-training sudenly seem very attractive.
It's not a question of technology, it's a question of society.
(Interestingly enough, in the US the only persons that do get big severance payments seem to be incompetent CEOs and the likes - the ones that put big companies close to bankrupcy usually get the biggest severance payments)
exactly. welcome to the real world. this kind of thing goes on all the time, has gone on all the time, and will go on, and on. recently, the tech workers have been exempt from this.
it all reminds me of the quote by Martin Niemöller:maybe we should have been paying more attention to the real world while we basked in our stock options and complimentary sports cars.
-samThe REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
Not only has this practice been going on for quite some time but even if it had just started why should anyone be shocked?
I'm going to refer back to the old adage of "The only thing constant in business is change." If this is true, which I have come to believe that it is, why should anything, done in the interest of share holders, be surprising to us?
I mean, C'mon people. Most of what has been going on in the tech industry is ridiculous. Geeks have been able to jump around from company to company in search of the highest buck and now companies view geeks as a commodity (which is our own doing) and we are the first to get canned. Big surprise. Also, Hairy's comment about being able to open up Front Page is no joke. About four months ago I ran into a girl I went to high school with. She is as dumb as rocks and our conversation sounded like it could have come right out of a Sally-Struthers-get-your-degree-at-home commercial. "Yeah, I was working a McDonalds there for a while but then I took a three month HTML class and now I'm making $15 an hour!@#!" Give me a break.
I guess that all I really have to say is that there are rules to business. Now, they may change quite a bit but there are still rules. Along with a set of rules I think you get two basic choices. You can play or you can get played.
Apparantly that's Katz's rule. Qwest "Tossed" 4000 workers? Hardly. I work in Qwest IT, and no one I know of is aware of a single non-management employee (in the generally used sense of the word, not in the sense that Qwest uses them to categorize employees) who has been released involuntarily from their position. Some contractors have been shuffled around and out, but, frankly, that's the risk of working for a contracting company, and that's why I don't do it any more.
What Qwest DID do was reaffirm its nearly inviolable hiring freeze with the goal of having 4000 fewer workers by the end of March, 2002. Perhaps there will be some layoffs next year, it's hard to say. No one, however, has been "tossed".
I am writing my congress reps http://www.house.gov and http://www.senate.gov about canceling most or all of the H-1 IT visas. There are plenty of American workers unemployed right now after the dot-com crash and recession is looming. There are plenty of H-1 foreigners that are sitting in American jobs at very low wages just to stay in the country. Wouldn't it be better to have the American's workers being employed than on unemployment?
I believe we are seeing the first steps towards the Dysotopian Worlds of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and other writers of the dark future/cyberpunk genre. I think I heard it here on Slashdot, someone said, if you want to see how your grandchildren will be living, take a good hard look at how the Palestinians are living right now. In two or three generations there will be 3 classes of people, the non-working poor, working poor and the super rich. The Bill Gates and Michael Dells of the future will be the real world leaders, while the governments become thier lap dogs. Declaring War on unspecified enemies, to jumpstart the Military-Industrial Complex, removing all pretense to a constitutional society and making computer crime a capital offence are just the beginning.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
where it's hard to fire an employee, and we know how that works. Take a look at their growth, their unemployment rate. Thanks, but no thanks, I'll stick to the American model.
boring rehash of 1980s arguments
So just what moral obligation does a company have to laid-off workers?
The question is wether we are moral equals engaged in a simple transaction: the exchange of labor for money; or is our employer our moral superior with a patriarchal obligation to care for our well being at the expense of it's own interests? If it is the first then the only moral obligations are those found in an employment contract, if the later then there is a corresponding moral obligation of loyalty on the part of the employee.
Our society seems a bit confused on this question, the answer is usually a mix which varies in it's emphasis from sector to sector but the trend has been away from the second view (mutual moral obligation) and towards the first view (no obligations beyond explicit contractual obligations). It is part of the larger social movement of maximising individual autonomy at the expense of community.
> That's a pretty long trek from the capitalist
> ethic that only a few years ago valued corporate
> loyalty as much as profits, and touted the
> company-employee bond.
From an economics standpoint, this is completely out of left field. The only "capitalist ethic" that exists, going way back to Keyes, is "Make money. Give money to investors. Repeat."
Aside from that inconsistency, this article reads like so much of tax-and-spend entitlement programs that the liberals tried to force upon us in the '90s.
In the late 90s and early 2000, the "labor" market had all the power and called the shots. Now the pendulum has swung back the other way. Boo hoo, get over it. Give it 3-8 years and it'll come back.
Oh, yeah... and the dot-com boom/bust is not alone since the Industrial revolution, Jon. Have a look at the chart price stocks of railroads in the 19th century sometime.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
As an alternative for our Republican readers, we could skip the tax angle and simply mandate the disclosure of "Employment Stability" statistics so that job applicants would know in advance about their statistical odds of remaining employed. The companies with lousy numbers would face premium salary demands and would therefore have to pay for the privilege of "churnover". Then again, they could limit themselves to hiring only those with nothing to lose (which some companies do anyway).
What kind of company will keep their employees while their's plenty of people giving away their work for free?
Jon ... Are they finally getting rid of you?
Disclaimer: This is not meant to be flamebait.
When you're competing against Micro$oft, what company has time for morals?
I'm a 2000 man.
The real problems in the workplace are mainly caused through greed and lack of respect for others. A company that dumps thousands of workers when things look bleak, but the execs don't take a pay cut...that is the sign of a company with execs who care only about the money. As long as you go to work for them realizing that is how they play, then there should be no surprises when you lose your job. The wise among us will plan and save for that day and get through it just fine.
Companies killed the idea of loyalty when massive cutting became vogue. However, the "organization" (definitely not the execs, who cashed in their stock long ago) suffers when it pays high prices to recruit people in the next boom.
We can't be accused of a huge amount of loyalty, though. How many of us have left a company with little or no notice? We're all (execs and non-execs) in it for the money to some extent. A job is not charity. Just understand that there are no guarantees, and plan for the day when you get the pink slip. Work a day and get paid for a day. Nothing more should be expected.
I think this is a well written argument. But it is also a complex arguement. There are any number of things wrong with the practices of many corporations, but it is still the best system in the world, at least in the US.
Does a company owe you anything? I think that they do owe something. US history (can't speak to other countries) is full of instances where companies abuse workers and take advantage of them. A number of workers' rights have been exacted into law to prevent these abuses.
So what does a company owe you? IMHO, they owe you more than your next paycheck. As your tenure increases, a company owes you notification of ending your job. The same applies in the reverse. You owe them notice. I don't have a great solution for implementing this. Humans are driven by emotions and if you tell your boss you are leaving in 4 wks, you might get launched. I'd vote for a bill to prevent early terminations for people who have notified you.
This gets complicated. What about pregnancies? Does a person (male or female) who takes leave for a new baby owe the company some amount of time back at work? I think they do.
Ah, my thoughts run amuck...
What about CEOs (and other executives) who are paid quite handsomely in stock (options or shares)? Often they have a short sighted view of the company because their compensation is tied to company success. Not necessarily profit/loss/market share performance. Usually stock price performance. My wife's company, for example, has laid off quite a few people. Does the business justify it? I don't know, but I doubt it's all business related. I think that as the stock has declined in price, there have been more actions taken. To me, that is contrary to the fundamental nature of a company. A company exists to continue to exist and derive a profit. Working to raise the stock price, which has very little relation to the success of the company, is poor business practice. Once you have issued stock, unless you need to issue more, stock price has no relation to the company's performance. Except in investor's perceptions.
I saw a comment on workers leaving poorly run companies or those with poor benefits. The problem here is that information does not flow well between companies. There is no place you can go look and see what a company really does with it's employees or how they are treated. Unless you know someone in the company, you are gambling when you accept a job.
The flip side of that is a company does not know what they will get when they hire you. They are (to some extent), gambling that you will do a good job. We have all seen people hired who did not perform. Sometimes that is the person's fault (laziness, lack of QA, etc.) and sometimes they are not suited to the job. However, it's a learning experience. For both the company and the employee.
IMHO (again), employees have some responsibility to perform. I would not want to see IT worked unionized with some certifications (not the current ones, new ones that measure skills), some expectation of performance, and some rules or guidelines to protect the company. At the same time, employees should be somewhat protected from random or stock-related firing. I'm not suggesting a company cannot fire people or lay them off, but some notice is required and some benefits must continue.
One last pet peeve and I'll cease rambling today. I'm well paid. As a DBA/developer, I'm paid near the top of my profession. However, one thing I think should be implemented is that public companies (can't regulate privates) should have some rules to prevent huge disparities between bottom and top level workers. Corporations often give out huge salaries to attract top level talent at the expense of others. I'm not looking for actual caps, but some type of relative percentages between a entry-level manager and a CEO. Between a Director and a programmer. Maybe we would have to use averages among levels, but I think the disparities contribute to inefficiencies as well as ethical abuse of non-executive employees. Especially in public companies. I think there is quite a bit of fiscal irresponsibility to shareholders in this area.
Thanks for listening.
One note: CORBA does not (necessarily) apply if a company goes bankrupt or ends their health benefits. Keep that in mind if you are the sole wage earner in a family.
The owners of corporations don't give a damn about what a corporation does as long as it turns a profit and the stock price keeps climbing.
It would be nice to think that it's a couple of coupon-clipping patricians that are the owners. It's true that the same people own a big chunk of all the stock share that are out there.
But middle and lower class people who tuck retirement money and savings via mutual and other funds make up the most influencial block of "owners". And the fact is, most people who invest like this don't give a damn what their investment firm does with it, so long as they get interest out of it.
Corporations lay off workers in order to stabilize their stocks and/or make themselves more profitable in order to attract purchases from investment firms, who will make their purchases with the money supplied by workers.
Hmm... Ironic.
From the Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce):
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
I wish somebody would layoff Katz so we wouldn't have to endure his pontificating. (BTW that's layoff as in terminate employment, not "layoff" as in stop heaping abuse on him)
You're using her as bait, Master!
Everyone was riding high 6 months ago, now it's a bunch of whines. Ya can't have it both ways.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
Regarding the following:
>Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between >three and six months' notice before they're laid >off, time enough to look for other work in a >sane, secure way.
Maybe I've been unfortunate enough to work for organizations that have hired the lowest common denominator for their planning groups, but what I've seen time and again are systems that cannot predict shortfalls that far in advance. In my current (soon to be former) position, they've gone from end of quarter layoffs to monthly layoffs to meet their financial objectives. Plus, most managers aren't going to want to scare the productivity out of their staff by giving them too much information especially when a headhunter is just a click away. Just my 2 cents.
The link provided by the AC leads to credible figures that directly contradict the claim about "at will" and unemployment rates. E.g. it shows that the more socialist Holland has unemployment rates almost half that of the US.
Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way.
Are you fucking insane? If this is the case, then employees should also have to give employers between three and six months notice before resigning. Time enough for the company to hire new talent and train them.
Continued health benefits. Employment used to be a contract: you worked hard for the company, the company took reasonable care of you. Employees who have been with a corporation any length of time at all -- I'd say six months -- ought to keep their health benefits until they find new work, a guarantee not even COBRA provides.
Are you fucking insane? Let me turn it around. If the employee resigns, the employee should be required to provide free consulting to the company until the company finds someone else adequately fulfill the responsibilities of the vacated position. Sound fair?
Shouldn't they at least have a chance to come up with other tasks, products, functions or ideas before they're booted out?
Maybe or maybe not. It depends on the situation. But in no way are they obligated to do that. Again, if I'm a company... and I deem you to be more of a liability than an asset... for whatever reason... you are gone.
Just like if you work for a company, and someone makes you a better offer, you are gone. It works both ways.
Katz, you need to get real and acknowledge both sides of the coin. Employees aren't the only ones suffering, I assure you. Employers are suffering also.
The foundation of work is this :
1) You work for company.
2) Company owes you a check.
Nothing more to it.
As long as the shutter of Cruiser "Aurora"'s front gun is kept in working condition, the "bunch of mindless jerks, who'll be first against the wall, when the revolution comes" has something to worry about. Fly high, Red Banner!
"Imagine no posessions,
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
In brotherhood of men
Imagine all the people sharing all the world!"
Remember, comrades, our day will come!
Katz is right, in today's economy a company does have to have a fluid structure to respond to rapidly changing market conditions. But laying off 4,000 workers is a sign that your company is about as fluid as granite.
At no time in American history that I'm aware of, not even at the start of the Great Depression, did the market go so sour so fast that a thousand workers that were earning the company profit yesterday were so much dead weight today. If you as an executive ever reach the conclusion that you need to lay off a gigantic chunk of your workforce, then either
1. You're just wrong, ie: you DO still need those workers
2. You should have been laying them off gradually for the last year or two
"Fluidity" is rapid structural change to meet the conditions of the environment. If that environment changes gradually, so must you. And no matter what the newspaper analysts spout about the significance of stock prices and what-all, the economy DOES NOT experience massive structural change over the course of a day, week, or month. No exogenous economic factors could rightly justify a mammoth sloughing of labor in such a short time.
I realize I'm just repeating myself. That's because the point is very simple. If sales slump a bit, shrinking profits, some staff should probably get the pink slip. Keeping them on (or worse, hiring more) will just worsen the company's situation if sales get still worse. Stayin in denial over the need to lay off a few hundred workers now, will only result in the need to lay off a few thousand later.
And NO, the company does NOT have any "moral obligation" to its employees. Employment is not a personal relationship, it is a business relationship. If I'm in a business relationship with someone, I expect them to be looking out for one thing: their own interests. Anyone who expects different needs to pause and remember what the PURPOSE of business is.
"Entitling" workers to benefits from their employers after being let go is preposterous, an aboslutely intolerable invasion of property rights. Requiring the extension of benefits involves the government re-writing nearly every employment contract in the nation. Further, it WILL increase the cost of employment. In a large company, the cost of maintaining the health benefits for a large number of layed-off workers will easily equal the salaries of several more workers. Thus the company will likely lay off more workers than it would without this requirement, in order to cover the costs of complying with it. So as we would expect from a short-sighted government policy, a regulation intended to help the problem of unemployment in one way, worsens it in another. Way to go, Feds.
MoNsTeR
Strange just about everything he is saying is straight of a book called No Logo by Naomi Klein which i am about 3/4 of the way through. I suggest anyone who has an interest in this subject read it. It covers the whole history of branding and corporate work culture.
/b
[Please type your sig here.]
I am pretty sure US law requires that the employers owe unemployment payments -- that is unless they pay to employees to forfeit those rights.
Out of the roughly 120 people I know that have been laid off at my company, I can count the number that were worth keeping on my middle finger.
Make sure you have enough liquid savings to live for at
least a few months without a job... easier said than done I
realize.
The only "capitalist ethic" is that the terms of a contract must be honored. Corporate loyalty is a recent concept, borrowed from socialism as a kind of advertising theme, like corporate social responsibility in general. In practice, an employer and employee are independent parties with a contract between them that specifies limited cooperation for mutual benefit. Each tries to negotiate the terms of this contract to their own greatest advantage. Your talents, experience and your time are your capital. A job, health benefits, stock plans, etc. are the company's capital. You make a contract, and when it's over it's over.
The idea that a company owes something to former employees has nothing to do with capitalism. It's completely in the realm of social theory, which should apply equally to an individual's behavior. How much do you owe your high school teachers after graduation? What about the guys you used to play basketball with every week? Maybe these folks did a lot for you then, but this is now, and you have new friends. You have kids now. There's only so much time.
People who run companies are responsible for obeying the law and honoring their contracts, and that's all, same as everybody else. Whether people try to influence corporate morality by legislation, or by our behavior as consumers of products, or as consumers of employment, or through any other method, corporations will never be responsible for doing more than they have to.
I know the market place is different now, but the truth of the matter is that the management of any company is just organized like Congress... the fact that they set their own pay raises, and expect the rest of the grunts to do their fighting for them when they get in messes from wastefulness, incompetence, or apathy.
This is a logical conclusion for any system that humans devise that is heirarchical. YOU WORK, they go play golf on the profits.
But there is a disturbing trend that I read about that has been going on recently, one that even business schools are trying to teach ethics against because it threatens the whole economy. Companies are gettting short term CEOs that are in the company for results, then they screw the future of it to make those results. Then the CEO moves on to the next company with the exact same plan, pocketing a load of money. There are names out there that we all know of, but unlike the past, anytime new management comes into a company now, they lay off people immediately. THIS IS THE NEW FACT OF BUSINESS. They (managers) have done it to themselves on this one. It is a cultural thing. The new corporate culture says, "screw the company for my stock bonuses." What is most surprising is that this is not burning us so horribly yet, which shows how bad MOST of the rest of the world is at business. Please note that I said most. Its surprising that we haven't been getting the crap kicked out of us on this one.
I was laid off 2 months ago by a small consulting company. There were 3 developers and the highest paid 2 were sent packing.
:).
This was really a devestating blow for both of us who were laid off. The other guy had gotten back from sick leave. His kid had been diagnosed with cancer and had to go through 2 surgeries, the second was a couple of days before we were laid off. He's also going through a divorce. I was truely afraid that he was going to snap.
It was my first job after graduating from University and I only had been there 3 months (2 years part time before that). I was just starting to pay back my student loans. I had just gotten a new apartment that was a little more in line with what I was making.
I'm moving out of my apartment today. I'm taking a break from packing boxes right now.
I have to say that I feel very betrayed by my former empoyer right now. I felt horrible when I was laid off, but I got over that rather quickly. My former empoyer promised that as soon as they got more work that they would hire us right back. I also got a few interviews (I was completely insulted in one of those interviews. I was offered $15/hr to program Java, c/c++, perl, ASP and coldfusion as well as design and program databases - is this what the economy has left us with?) and a few contracts to help pay (some of) the bills. A couple of days ago I found out that the person left behind was given a (rather large) raise and is now between myself and the other guy who was laid off in terms of salary.
I compared what I have been going through to a kick in the teeth followed up by a kick in the groin.
I confronted the person who got the raise and she told me that it was true. The next day I got a call from my Former Employer and she told me that I had upset the other developer and should apologize.
To anyone who's still reading, thank you, I needed to rant somewhere and my friends and family has gotten sick of my bitching
Thank you for the timely article, Jon. I could really relate to it.
I think the nature of the IT industry is that we get huge salaries to start (I did anyway), but it's almost expected that we could lose our jobs at any time. My layoff came as a complete surprise to me and everyone in the company. Everything was fine in the morning and in the afternoon my bosses were in my office with the door closed laying me off. I do suggest to treat your job like a contract. Stuff as much money away as you possibly can while you have it. You won't know when you'll have a job next.
-j
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
Here's what's worse: even when the executive officers of a company take their responsibilities to those who work for it seriously, and the company is turning a *profit*, shareholders and analysts sometimes still put pressure on them to lay people off, so that (short-term), profits will be higher.
Kay Whitmore, I'm told, was the CEO of Kodak
through the early 1990s. The company was profitable, doing research, employing thousands. However, there was a good deal of pressure to do some head chopping, and Whitmore was reluctant to do it, especially since the company was actually making a profit. But apparently not enough. Analysts and shareholders decided that a greater profit could be realized by cutting more jobs, and they started with firing Whitmore so they could find someone with more of a stomach and less of a conscience.
(This is taken from James Lucas' and Warner Woodworth's "Working Toward Zion"... "Zion" being meant here in a general sense, not the Jewish state sense. The authors are Mormons...)
Tweet, tweet.
John Katz can't spell.
Maybe Katz would be laid off. Maybe some of the visas will get taken away. Maybe some expired visas will be enforced and people with possible bomber like tendancies will get sent home. And maybe instead of front line "techs" reading some workaround from a book, there'll actually be backline people to create patches to fix problems.
And, maybe this will make some people think about their futures. Maybe save money and not have the biggest and best of everything because if you spread yourself too thin, you'll end up getting rid of it in order to get by.
It sounds to me like everyone is implying that once you are layed off you have no more money coming in. This is why god invented unemployment. If you can't find another job before those benefits run out, then perhaps there is a reason you were let go.
If you are working at a place where you are really shocked when layoffs occure, I think you need to pay a little more attention of what is going on around you. Office gossip, although seldom 100% accureate, is a good thing to keep up on.
I know of a company that wants to keep their employees, but they are in a rut where high turnover makes the company ineffective, which only multiplies the problem of keeping employees. They get contracts only to fail miserably, because most of their remaining employees are fresh out of college and pretty useless for real development. Even their project manager is a moron, since they had no one else to promote when the original manager left. It is really pretty sad.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
A year ago, it was the tech workers sticking it to the corporations. Randomly jumping from job to job. Demanding ridicuous salaries and perks. Now that the chickens have come home to roost, they want to moan about it. I used to privately bemoan my "low" 60k salary when I heard about all the little dope-smoking, liberal hippy punks out in the valley making hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But I've still got my 60k salary and they're working at McDonalds. Who got the last laugh, now, biyotch!?
Or you could let the market decide what your company will do, while you grow up and take responsibility for yourself. For crying out loud: learn to save some money! If you'll try to keep two to six month's survival money on hand, you'll be in better shape when something like this happens. If you have no loyalty to your company and/or suspect that your company has no loyalty to you, quit spending money as if your company gave it out free. Most of the dot-com people were making enough money at least for awhile that they could've put some of it away instead of burning it.
My number one advice: don't waste money on a car. You're only going to have it ten years anyway. (Probably much less.) All you need it for is to get from the computers at home to the computers at work. :) Buy a five year old reliable junker for $3000. Drive it until it falls apart. Save a little extra for repairs. Remember, the value your car loses while you own it is money thrown away. Things like your home will lose a lot less value.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
My wife works as a tech writer for a major airline. Although there were some minor layoffs before, she felt pretty secure in her job.
Until two weeks ago.
The airline industry had a disaster, and they need to lay off 20% of their staff in order to stay afloat. And they need to lay them off NOW. And you know what? That's okay. It'll suck for us if she loses her job (especially the benefits, since i'm a contractor), but we understand that the company is in serious trouble, through no fault of its own.
Luckily, i'm contracting at a well-funded nonprofit, so my position is secure, and our income is good.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
In the bad old days of pension plans, there were good people who were handcuffed to jobs that were unsatisfactory, not particularly great pay, and so on. They would never leave since they had so much invested with the company in terms of retirement, and on average, there were less layoffs in this environment. Now, with individual retirement plans (IRAs, etc) and a new expectation that people are mobile, I think things have improved. At least for people who are valuable and who do contribute, and have the potential to contribute to many different projects, the mere existence of other opportunties means better conditions where they currently are, at least in principle.
I have moved jobs several times, for my great benefit. Sometimes it was financial benefit, sometimes to be in a more desirable part of the country, and sometimes for a much better professional opportunity. My grandfather would have never thought of leaving his job, and spent years complaining about how awful it was. He was never going to get laid off, but there was a price paid for that certainty, which was less professional opportunity, not a killer salary, and less exciting overall professional opportunities.
The point is that there is a tradeoff of security for reward on both sides (employers and employees.) A government job may not be high-paying or particularly rewarding, but the chance of layoff is low. A promising startup might make someone rich quick, but there is a chance it will crash and burn. You can't (rationally) expect something for nothing!
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
It was suppose to be Communism vs Capitalism. Capitalism was an abbreviation for Free Market Capitalism.
But now there are no free markets. If labor supply exceeds labor demand, corporations lay people off and cut wages. If labor demand exceeds supply corporations complain that they can not find workers (being unable to find the ones they laid off) and that wages are too high and import workers.
Regulations are structured for corporate convenience rather than public safety.
Anti-trust is only enforced when corporate interests collide.
And monopolies are legalized and encouraged at consumer expense.
They may not vote into office the politicians, but they certainly decide who can run, effectively limiting the range of candidates.
Much of corporate posturing and upheaval is done to maintain stock market image. In today's market-driven economy a company is seen as only as strong as its stock. Growth is everything. When stocks are rising they throw everything, and then some, into maintaining growth. When stocks are diving companies shed all that extra fluff and get back to their core business. The borrowing they did during the super-ambitious growth phase makes the cuts go deeper.
Look at the arlines today. They had a shutdown of a couple days. The income hit they took on just those few days threatened payroll. Should any industry be riding that thin an edge? Do you think Mom-and-Pop's deli would go under if they closed for a couple days? Do you think a 20% reduction in sandwiches sold for a few months would really put them out of business?
Instead of building a strong, robust company execs are focusing on building stock market image. That's the crime.
- Sig this!
In the U.S., we have a certain amount of disconnection between laws and morals. For instance, while the moral "Do not kill" is codified as a law, "Don't look at p0rn" is not (at least in most cases). IMHO, this disconnection is due to the two facts that people in the U.S. come from diverse backgrounds and that personal freedoms are (or at least were) highly valued.
Look at what was proposed:
- Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
Understand this basic truism - your job is not secure, it never was, it never will be. A company's primary goal in life is not to provide jobs for its employees. It's primary goal is to survive and the only way to survive is by making a profit. If a company has to make a choice between making a profit or shedding employees it will eventually shed the employees, it has no choice.
Fortunately you don't need or want job security. What you really need to strive for is career security. As long as you have unique skills you will be able to find another job and getting laid off is unfortunate but by no means catastrophic.
I've been laid off by a Fortune 500 firm and I've also been laid off by a 200 person firm. In both cases I was lucky and able to find a new job immediately. Keep current in your field and you'll have no problems. (Of course, if you're a ditch digger or a middle manager you might want to seriously re-consider your career patch
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way.
this is called severance pay. And don't you mean minimum warning? i.e., there should be some minimum amount of time that an employer would need to give to a laid off employee to find work?
also note that there are a lot of legal issues for public companies regarding lay offs that makes this impossible
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
We're all berating companies that are losing money, because the executives lay people off instead of cutting their own salaries.
But I wonder; if you were making less money, which would you get rid of first; cable TV and convenience foods, or the kid that gets $20 to mow your lawn?
Either way, you're putting somebody out of work. How dare you choose not to spend that money.
So some evil executive chooses to cut 1,000 employees who are getting paid $60,000 apiece instead of cutting his $10 million salary by 20%. Never mind that 20% of his salary saves the company $2 million, and firing those 1,000 people saves the company $60 million in salaries alone, not counting the other expenses involved in having a 200 watt heater taking up a few square meters of real estate, no, he's being short-sighted and evil.
If you get laid off, you are out a $60,000 salary, and have to find a new job. It won't be impossible, because prospective employers will understand that you got laid off through no fault of your own.
If the $10 million a year executive refuses to lay you off, however, the shareholders will fire HIM, he'll be out $10 million a year, and it'll be hard for him to find a new job right away because he'll have a reputation for not being willing to follow the will of the people who OWN THE BUSINESS.
So how about instead of griping and bitching about the horrible evil executives trying to fire 1,000 people so they don't have to bankrupt out from under 30,000, and instead concentrate on how you can start putting in a whole day's work for a whole day's pay, instead of being on Slashdot on the company's nickel (yep, I'm guilty too), or printing your resume on the company's laser printers, or taking paper clips home, or stealing coffee filters from the breakroom, or otherwise contributing to the fact that the salary of an employee in this country today is a FRACTION of what it costs to have that employee.
Anyways, the fact of the matter is that there is no debating the fact that Denmark has had far worse unemployment on the aggregate, which is the only reasonable measure.
Not really, it's more of a drag on the economy. But even if you accept this, 1.6M may sound like a lot (and it is), but it's just
This also completely ignores other burdens the US faces which other most other countries do not face to a similar extent. e.g., large immigration of poor and uneducated people, pre-existing diverse populations, etc.
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people...
I must say, on a more serious note, that I'm in the middle of a great book as I write this that I'd highly recommend to all. It is by Thomas Frank, the author of The Conquest of Cool and Commodify Your Dissent(some essays in it, anyway).
The book is One Market Under God . It is a profoundly engaging read, and discusses more than the matter of the eroding social contract that Katz touches on (and someone else rightly notes has been worsening over decades). It really delves deeply into mid-to-late 90s "New Economy" mythology- examining the religious texts of the myth (FastCompany, RedHerring, Wired (esp. Kevin Kelly's insufferable and blasphemous revisitations of the original luciferic lie itself, we-shall-be-as-gods!)), the Gods of the religion (the dotcom wunderkinds, the new economy billionaires, the venture capitalists, etc.), the mad prophets of the religion (Tom Peters et al), and of course, the religion itself- our New Economy!
HIGHLY recommended.
> from the Industrial Revolution to the blessedly short-lived dot.com era.
Including shitty websites like slashdot, except at least most dot-cums don't just sit there waiting for others to supply them with articles AND responses.
Use slashdot but deny them revenue! Install an adbuster proxy now! Milk them dry then form a better, more Free service!
When it comes to layoffs in America, you need to take a different perspective.
... stay focused on whats important folks.
One of the reasons that we have a relatively low unemployment rate compared to other industrialized nations is that Americans are easy to fire.
Thats right folks, in America being easy to fire makes it easier for businesses to hire employees.
Take France for example. They have all kinds of workers compensation laws that make it extremely expensive and difficult for companies to lay off workers. Naturally, French companies are extremely cautious hiring new blood. This partially explains a French 9.7% unemployment rate in 2000.
Here in America, companies don't have such worries, so they can take more risks and hire more workers more often. Hence our 4% unemployment rate.
Big Business makes a Big target to point guns at in the wake of national disasters
yes the days of 5-figure signing bonuses, new BMWs, and 16-year olds getting paid 6-figures are over. Try saving money when you are working to cover when you aren't. Try NOT keeping up with the Jones'. Try to keep two years expenses in liquid assets, its empowering. If you can't save two years' expenses, try reducing your expenses. A 5 year-old Honda runs just as well as a new one. A Toyota will get you to work forever; if you want a Mercedes don't buy a house. Try exercising a little restraint and in return you will gain the serenity of knowing that you are NOT tied to a job, that you CAN LEAVE anytime you want. Capital is empowering; ask your CEO. Live moderately, and you'll be suprised how LITTLE money you require. Try a little bit of personal responsibility instead of always asking Big Brother for a helping hand; that hand is the one in your pocket, around your throat. Try NOT needing any assistance to live, its good for you.
We're so used to the stupidity of it all that we don't ask obvious questions: How the hell did we end up with a system where the employer controls our access to health care? How can the employer find a plan that really suits all their employees needs? Conversely, what is the employee's motivation to keep their own health care costs down? I'd prefer a law that prohibited employers from dictating a health care plan.
If I change jobs it shouldn't affect my health care. People should be able to choose the services they need, buy them individually, and if an employer wants to reimburse them that's fine.
Employment at Will is at the heart of the problem;
do some research on what it is and just how many states allow it.
On another side note if every laid off person in America put 5 bucks in a fund to help each other or even to sue or lobby for laws to be changed; maybe our children will have a better future.
anonymous coward on purpose: already a victim of downsizing in the past.
this has been a feature of american society since the last 2 centuries. why does it merit a big discussion? blue collar guys (working class folks)(and third world) have always faced this. so you too are seeing a slice of real life, eh? dont worry it is all for the good. there's been depressions and wars before and the worlds come through it. Of course there are disagreeble things in capitalism. calling it corporatism as if its something new doesnt make things any different. any capitalist has to make a profit or he'll be swallowed up in no time. where do 'people' and all the ethical things even enter the picture? get off it!
it's the soldier, the pawn of politicians, who will take it away.
Don't forget to get "The Baffler" which is produced quarterly. Their latest issue is called "The God that Sucked". It's full of great articles, written by "Gen Xers", who don't quite agree with the way things work. It's a great read, if you can get it, I recommend it. You can also go to The Baffler.
Oh yeah, Thomas Frank is the editor.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
I know this isn't necessarily the Qwest layoff that I'm about to mention, but hang on anyway...
Northwest just laid of a about 1500 workers too (http://www.msnbc.com/news/555872.asp), and Minneapolis is feeling that pretty badly. Northwest airlines is one of the biggest employers in Minnesota, so most of those people left from here. That sucks for a lot of people, and there's not much anybody can do but find new work, but I heard last night on NPR that the Airline Pilots Union is making one of their biggest priorities in the new airline security debates the priveleged consideration of people with general airline experience (flight attendants, former pilots, etc.) for jobs as air marshalls or FAA airport security jobs.
It's tough to apply this to IT, I know, but it's impressive to see this union actually taking such a broad view of the work they do, linking new political and old labour issues so well. I mean, who's looking out for those Qwest empoyees? Will they get any kind of prior consideration or notification if they're applying to other industry jobs, or will they just get undercut by recent college grads that'll work for less?
A Transmission From PlanetJIM.[end trans]
Katz questions the morality of paying turnaround artists and other executives lots of money while laying off the rank and file. I would like to point out that when a company goes out of business for lack of "turning things around" everyone ends up unemployed. How is that morally better?
Katz also gives several "alternatives" to the current system. "How about 3-6 mo. warning that you will be unemployed?" Um, are you out of your mind? Letting the employee have 3-6 months to become disgruntled and wreak havoc internally? "How about letting these techies find other ways to be useful to the company?" What gives techies a better right to feed thier families than the secretaries and janitors? What makes you think there is another place for them? And in what way does this reduce company costs (which is why they are laying off if you will recall)?
I agree with posters who have commented that making a COBRA payment when you are now an ex-wage-earner is a sick joke. This should however clue you in to the real cost of health insurance. I beleive (although this is not the forum to discuss it) that if Joe Average had to pay for his own health insurance, "reform" would have happened already.
A well informed poster mentioned how different American and British unions are. They developed in different times for different reasons (As Sesame Street says, "not weird, just different). Furthermore, since he asserts that Brittain has had unions for almost 400 years, it should not be a surprise if thier system has had kinks worked out of it.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
Capitalism his long been decried as brutal, cold and heartless. This complaint has been raised dozens of times by workers suddenly finding themselves without an income, since the time of Adam Smith in the 1700's. The great irony that Smith illustrated in The Wealth of Nations is that the very workers who felt mistreated and exploited by the system they worked in (and often were justified in these feelings) actually stood to realize enormous benifits. Because capitalism pushes society towards ever-increasing productivity, it is inevitable that, on the average, the quality of life for everyone will increase over time. The irony of this was sharper a few hundred years ago when workers were routenely maimed and killed by in mines and factories, or brutalized by their employers, or starved when they had not enough money for their bread.
Today, we reap the benifits of Smith's great irony. Capitalism has bought prosperity unprecidented in human history to those who have stuck with it. But amidst this prosperity, we forget at whose alter we make our sacrifices. Capitalism is not a kindly, beneficent god. It is a lusty, greedy and fickle god, who is capable of enormous cruelty towards those why often deserve it the least. We should not forget that beneath it's new robes and trapings, the engine of our economy is the same engine the drove us to the Great Crash 1929 and the Great Depression. It is the same engine that brought us through the panful boom and bust cycle of the late 1800's. And it is the same engine that maimed and killed innocent little children by the tens of thousands in the mines, factories and mills of the 18th and 19th centuries. It may have be better behaved of late, but it is the same god, and it will not simply become tame and docile because we want it to.
This is bunk. There has never been a company-employee bond, except where employers wished to exploit use feelings of loyalty and camradery to get their workers to accept lower wages. Loyalty and commitment don't ammount to a hill of beans when the quarter is ending and the board of directors has to submit a negative report to shareholders. This isn't cynical, or hyperbole. This is how money is made and buisiness is done. Just because high-tech is more cute and cuddly than coal mining doesn't mean that tech workers are free from the same covenant. Anyone who thought otherwise is delusional. And so it has been since our nation was founded. Read your history. This is not an invention of AOL-Time-Warner, Microsoft and Texaco. This is good, old fasioned bribery of the same stripe that J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller used. Nothing new here. Well, duh.My advice to anyone experienceing a pinch during these times (as I myself am) is that you should go and read your history. Capitalism is not a freindly thing, but there is much more to life than work, wages retirement and death.
Also, it should be noted that I am not an anti-capitalist, socialist or an anarchist. I work in the tech industry, and as long as I have a job I get paid a wage just like everyone else. I don't see a viable "alternative" to capitalism in systems like Marxism. However, I do beleive that capitalism should be containied to areas where it is appropriate. It should not be allowed to interfere with governance in any way, for instance. Markets are decidedly un-democratic. Additionally, I beleive that where capitalism is apropriate, it should be practiced in a rigorous, mathmatically pure way ("atomic" copmetition, as Smith termed it). Large corporations are anti-capitalist, as they attempt to avoid the process of competition in the determination of supply and demand. And finally, I beleive that the government should create systems outside of these capitalist structures to aid and assist workers who have been cast out or harmed by the process, and to fill the roles in which capitalism functions poorly (such as health care).
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Just because the .sig includes porn does not mean the content of the message was a troll. Read the freaking post - that is a very Republican point of view. Dumbass moderator ...
I refuse to be loyal to any company especially as a tech worker.
Gone are the days of company taking care of you (so 50's and 60's). Nowadays, you take care of yourself and look out for number one.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to be loyal for the people I work with but I cannot. Because as soon as I do, my ass is on the street with my wife and son depending on me to bring home the bacon.
I totally agree with one point: it should be fucking federal law for companies to inform workers 6 months in advance before laying off. I have never experience such an ordeal (I work for small companies) but I have had dozens of friends that contemplated bankruptcy.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Making it expensive, difficult, or impossible to fire employees has major drawbacks. Put bluntly, the more difficult you make it to fire an employee, the more difficult it is to hire. The reason for this is quite simple, the costs in the event that an employee becomes unnecessary tend to far exceed the marginal benefits bestowed on the company by producing more goods or services. When the employee is productive, just small sliver of the revenues go back to the shareholders as profits. When an employee is unproductive, and continuees to be employed, their wage comes right off the companies bottom line. In other words, unless an employeer is damn sure that the demand for more goods and services will remain steady (or grow), they will NOT hire.
The end result is that:
The unemployed (all employees in effect) have a harder time finding work and moving around.
The employer has a difficult time staffing.
The shareholder has his profits pinched AND diminished.
The consumer (which we all are ultimately) has less buying power because the companies from which they buy goods are inefficient.
In the long run, the available work pool is also diminished because many workers that would otherwise be available are employed inefficiently [which is exactly what "your" laws do, almost by definition, because "you" feel the need to make it artificially expensive to shift employees around.]
Translation: It's really not good for anyone in the long run.
The most you can say is that in the short run it may sound good for the CURRENTLY EMPLOYED employee. However, when you look at this from an empirical perspective (e.g., unemployment figures in left-leaning countries), it's not good at all.
Now this is not to say that I support all firing and lay-offs. Firstly, I believe there IS a certain moral obligation to the employees, to try to look out for them, where it can be done reasonably. Secondly, there are indeed times when it makes more economic sense for a company to continue employing people even when they cannot be employed efficiently in the short run, but this is not what these leftist laws suggest. An employer that is looking out for his companies interests would (generally) do this automatically, assuming he is generally rational (which is a pretty fundamental underpinning of modern economic theory). The only reasonable difference these left-leaning laws can hope to make is that might prevent the employer from exercising his good judgement.
>> H1-B workers must be paid at least the going wage and can't depress it. <<
This is debatable. It is easy to manipuate salary surveys and job titles.
>> And, IIRC, you can't hire an H1-B worker if you have been actively laying off Americans. <<
The monitoring is very poor. Words in a law and action are two different things.
>> They are certainly not cheap labor. If you know of cases of H1-B "sweatshops", I suggest you contact the INS -- their employer is breaking immigration laws. <<
Hidden camera?
What you have is a de-facto indentured servant. They cannot easily shop around if abused, and are often used to or expect oppression.
The H1B thing is a big lie. Wether you agree with open borders WRT employment or not, the H1B laws were based on PAC manipulation of the facts and sloppy studies.
Table-ized A.I.
In the case of the airlines,losing 20% of your business in 1 day would seem to be a structural change. Actually it was more like 50% but is projected to return to within 20% of previous levels.Also in the case of US Air losing a major hub (RR National) isn't this a structural change?
In the matter of layoffs in other industries the psychological effects have to be considered. It is better for morale to do it all at once rather than a "Chinese Water Torture" effect of dribbling it out over weeks/months
I've survived a recession or two, but then I'm older than dirt. :)
Until mid-August, I worked for a technology company. They've laid off thousands, in three waves, and I got hit in the second. The severance was pretty good, although I had to sign a statement promising I wouldn't sue for age discrimination (over 40). They just laid off another 10% of their technical workforce this week.
I contrast that with my husband, who works in a fairly non-technical industry. His company, which is about 80 years old, has also felt the sting of the economic downturn. But the company's reaction was quite different: Rather than shelve highly-skilled employees, they cut back. There's no overtime. Vacation schedules are pretty rigid. Shifts have been re-arranged. But everybody's still working.
I'm enjoying my newly independent life and schedule. I'm not earning nearly as much (yet), but I'm not spending as much either. The trick is in learning to market your own skills (no easy task!!) and doing so aggressively. I suspect it'll be a long, long time, if ever, before I place my faith in another corporation. And if I ever do, I'll be watching behind me.
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
I'm almost hesitant to say this, considering the libertarian bent of /., but one employer that doesn't follow these practices is the U.S. government.
disclaimer - While I haven't worked for the fed personally, I've worked with them a good bit as a contractor, and feel competent to comment. No, I'm not a secret plant of the mythical secret controllers (who I feel are some sort of parental-wish-fulfillment urge to have a 'greater power,' and who are somehow super efficient in contrast to the rest of the fed.)
The pay for the fed is crap. No doubt about it. But, the job security and benefits are nutty. It is, sometimes unfortunately, impossible to get fired. Federal workers get lots of vacation time (I don't remember exactly how much, but I remember being surprised when I heard.)
But what about the insane bureaucracy? This is, unfortunatly, quit true. But, I believe a lot of this arises from the lack of quality employees. Much like teaching, there are many fine people who work out of a sense of personaly responsibility, but there are placeholders too.
There is a large demand for qualified techs there-mainly due to the rigitidy of thw workplace (ties and cubes) and the low pay (which *is* more than 0, what many people are making now.) And hell, if more techs work there, maybe the inherit freakiness of techs will help loosen up some of the trivial things and tighten up some of the crappy ones.
Elegance is for tailors. -A. Einstein
Who else did what I did, running out at lunch after reading this (yes, buying online counts) and buying a copy of Sennett's book The Corrosion of Character? I found it in about five minutes at my local Borders (probably would have been quicker if I hadn't stopped to verify its location in TitleSleuth), picked it up, started previewing it, and had trouble putting it down to check out and come back to work.
Anyone who is at all interested in what we've traded away (and why) for our upward mobility should read this. I find it fascinating -- especially since I almost felt like I was looking in a mirror reading the example in the first chapter.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
Want to see the economy soar? Declare a layoff holiday.
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
As an example, I left my company one day before they laid off hundreds of employees. They gave no sign of being in any kind of trouble. Until that day. I left thinking all was well. Guess I was the lucky one.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
We all want the benefits and security, but no risks. If there are risks, they should be borne by others. We are a nation of weenies.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I'm single and recently unemployed in a suburb of Boston. I pay $1400/mo. in rent and $300/mo. in COBRA.
Fortunately, my state is generous enough to provide $1900/mo. (gross) in unemployment benefits. Not enough to cover all the essentials, but isn't that what savings is for?
The INS has never rescinded a H-1B visa after
approving it. There are provision in the law for
enforcement, but the INS has not had the manpower,
money, or incentive to do so.
The only time the INS makes an enforcement is in
the initial approval of the visa, which is pretty
rubber stamp.
The same are happening in the IT industry. i.e. If
you found a new job and are moving on. The first thing they do is dock your rating, then they reduce your bonus, worst of all, they ask if you would "voluntarily" be placed on the remedial category. This happens to you because most company uses forced ranking as a means to distribute ratings into a statistical bell curve. The logic is this "Since you are leaving anyways, you wouldn't care how you are rated - but maybe you can save Joe or Mary from being rated a big Loser".
I agree with the sentiments!
Why don't you just take my loser manager away and leave me along to finish my work!?
So it's a case of enlightened self-interest on the part of employers. The down side is that we consumers are no longer responsible for our health costs, so we have less incentive to keep them down.
As long as people choose jobs based strictly on salary, this will continue. We constantly hear people bitch when Boeing lays off 5,000 employees, but I've watched lots of machinist and engineers give up jobs at small companies so they could make an extra 5 to 10 thousand a year at Boeing. It is simple, don't work for companies that do this. Or if you do, get a contract that gurantees you a year's salary if they fire you so you can look for another job. For people with a family to support, I would think job security would be one of the most important aspects to consider when taking a job, but most people don't even seem to consider it compared to salary and benefits. Also, don't forget, companies are not the only ones that treat jobs as disposable. Loyalty is a two way street.
The problem is that the employee doesn't get a copy of the conversation the new compnay has with the old one.
I couldn't have said it better. Restricting the operations of a company in this manner can be increadibly destructive to both the company and the economy. An employer has to have the right to hire and fire people, as they see fit. Period. Inhibiting this is interfering with their ability to effectively run THEIR company.
I've never held a job for more than a couple
years, and I don't feel powerless. I get laid
off on a whim sometimes (especially as a
contractor/consultant) but I also never feel
"trapped" in a job.
People who work in one place for many many years
have to guard against the tendency to fear the
job market and feel stuck and dependent on their
current employer. The ridiculous tradition of
having employers furnish health insurance only
makes that worse by tying people's health
security to their current job.
Rather than go back to the traditional serf-like
loyalty, I'd rather constantly upgrade my skills
and move from job to job as I'm needed. I know
that's harder to do in lines of work other than
mine, but let's talk about how to fix that.
Having the skills
to quit your job any time you want is *real*
job security, and it gives you a lot more
leverage to push for doing things right in the
workplace and not being treated like an
expendable cog.
Your constitution has been made a joke by new powers.
Who is our economy for?
Who is our country for?
This is a free market economy, we do not need anymore regulations.
You should stay up to date with your skills if you want to keep earning your living, even if the economy turns down. Your skill set, and work ethic, go a long way to making you valuable to your employer, and more secure in your job. No one should have to take care of you, but you.
If a company is given to letting people go everytime there is a slow down in the economy, you should be aware of that when you do your due dilligence(sp?) before taking the job...
A truely free market economy will (to some degree) treat its people like a resource, and stop using them when they are no longer needed (or percieved to be needed, by short sightedness).
But there is a backlash against the company that does this to reflexivly. After a while the work force knows that when you hire on with XYZ Corp. you will probably get a pink slip when the economy turns down, or they are not doing well. Do you think that that company will be getting 100% out of its workforce?
The work force has some responsibility in this too.
Just some random thoughts.
~Sean
The fact is that even if you accept 1% unquestioningly [I could easily debate this point, e.g., certainly not ALL the prisoners would have both actively looked for work and be unemployable. Also the various EU stats have their own footnotes, such as welfare jobs (see France), etc], the US still has sizable lead on the aggregate. In fact, it's been argued by many economists that those that were unemployed during the economic boom were effectively (and will always be) unemployable. So it WAS an _effective_ unemployment rate of 1% or so (if you include your prisoner argument). Whereas in many parts of Europe, the unemployment rates are so chronically high that this argument simply cannot be made.
Yes, but you have to pay for it yourself. Which is difficult when you are unemployed. My COBRA currently costs $435 per month for me and my wife. Almost exactly half my unemployment check.
This would have been insightful and enlightining if this was written 18 months ago
Perhaps this has already been said or implied, but-
There is no law or norm preventing white-collar workers from forming unions.
When a company's earnings come in at less than expected, but still provided a profit, the company may fire workers hoping for "growth" the next quarter. Only one example.
Just as the Old Economy took advantage of its laborers, the New Economy is doing so. Workers of the past formed unions to protect their interests and rights. New Economy laborers should do the same. Unions may not be able to guarantee all that the worker desires, but organized and run effectively, they can be of great benefit.
Whereas in many parts of Europe, the unemployment
rates are so chronically high that this argument simply cannot be made.
Of course, in socialist Europe, you still get paid even if you're dole scum. I hear that in the USA, gangs of rich old conservative white xian redneck men go around shooting the poor people with their right to bear arms (and shoot them into the bodies of poor, black or islamic people)
If you get fired devote time and energy to open source programs that go right after your former employers product line. The next time you work make sure you have one hell of a contract that is secured with an escroe account just in case.
Is that the US markets have proven far more flexible then the European ones over the last decade. American companies have had the option to size their staffs as necessary. And over that same period, the US economy has created far more money, which has flowed down virtually to level of the economy.
There are distinct advantages to flexibility, and the momentary pain that the US is suffering right now, is NO reason to trash a system that has worked phenomenally well recently.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
You could remove every reference to technology in Jon's essay and leave all the stuff about "management in the US etc" and it would still be true.
Perhaps on Slashdot the word technology must be randomly inserted to make a piece seem appropriate, but really, the causes of this job instability are mostly social: corporate fads, little worker power, a system of economics that wobbles no matter how stable the Fed tries to make it...
Market speculation happens. That the latest bubble was over Internet companies and not highrise office space (just to grab an example from the past), does mean that "technology" is related to the hard times some people are facing, but it does not make it the cause of those hard times.
Hi! I'm a sig virus. Copy me (slightly modified) into your sig file and help me spread!
The answer is no. Moving along, Mr. Katz...
"Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way."
That's got to be one of the most absurd statements I've heard, even from Katz. Part of the modern economy, is that companies need to react quickly. We're moving to a system, where companies like Dell plan their inventories to be at less than a weeks worth of goods. In the modern economy, companies simply don't have long periods of time to mull decisions. In 6 months, a company can be gone. I've worked for companies that the company lasted less than a year from inception to closure.
I particularly like, how 2 paragraphs later, Jon is even suggesting that no employer can predict what staff they'll need in 6 months. So he doesn't even agree with himself.
If you're going to suggest nonsense like this, it seems only fair, that employees give 6 months of notice when they intend to leave for somewhere else.
At least in California, it's made very clear when you're hired, that you're hired "at will". That's good enough for me, I know that I could be curbed at any time. And I accept, and embrace that state.
"Employees who have been with a corporation any length of time at all -- I'd say six months -- ought to keep their health benefits until they find new work, a guarantee not even COBRA provides."
And where in gods name do you suggest the money for something as insanely expensive as this, is going to come from?
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I keep saying over and over again that this 'internet' or 'information' revolution very heavily mirrors the industrial revolution. Read up on the industrial revolution and macroeconomics and you will see that this corporate behavior is almost blatantly predictable (I've been saying it for about three years now).
.and the self-feeding cycle continues. . .
It's not the corporations that are to blame, but the econimic cycles that occur when a heap of new technology is invented. The corporations are just responding to the massive undulations of the economy. This is capitalism in a rarer form.
Basically when new technology is invented (such as the mills of the industrial revolution or the internet in our case), government and the general public do not understand the technology nor how to regulate it thus they take a lassiez-faire (let do) approach -- very little regulation. Corporations get bigger, government gets smaller, money starts to flow rapidly and people are happy about it. Governments attribute the growth to their 'small government' policies and the public agrees. The economy slowly moves from a more socialistic model to more and more capitalistic.
It all gets to almost to fanatical proportions to the point that the growth can no longer support itself and it collapses. The new 'smaller' government is no longer strong enough to prop the economy back up (such as they did after the Great Depression) and they attribute it to the fact that they're too big and try to make themselves smaller (under the guidance of the new, massive and powerful corporations).
Thus, the next peak of the undulation is even larger (because the fanaticism and what corporations are allowed to do is even less checked), profits are higher, there are more jobs and people are happier. . . until the next fall of the undulation which is a LOT worse then the last and tougher to get out of. . .
Pure capitalism fosters amazing innovation and huge profits overall, but pure capitalism tends to fluxuate VERY heavily from rags to riches over and over again. A more socialistic model does not foster as much innovation and profits, but has less undulations and leaves for a more steady life. Pure capitalism also fosters a class-divide where the richer get richer and the poorer get poorer, while a more socialistic approach leaves for a more even divide and a middle class.
This can be seen when you compare the US to more socialistic countries such as the UK -- they didn't get as rich as us when the 'going was good', however they're not going to be as poor as us when 'the going gets bad'.
I could go on for hours on this, but I'll quit here. Read up on the industrial revolution -- the similarities are amazing. The Bill Gates of today was like the Rockerfellas of yesterday; AOL-Time-Warner-Netscape of today is like the Carnegie Steel of yesterday. THE MASSIVE FLUCTUATIONS OF THE ECONOMY TODAY ARE LIKE THE MASSIVE FLUCTUATIONS OF THE ECONOMY IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION -- and corporations are just reacting to it.
It was the massive fluctuations, the divide between the rich and the poor and the seeming corporate infidelity that Karl Marx proposed Communism -- we have since seen that Communism does not work (leads to an almost tyranny), and we have learned from the industrial revolution that pure capitalism does not work.
A socialistic/capitalistc mix is the best scenario (such as we have had in the past), however as more and more new technology is introduced, the government and the general public do not understand it, go for a 'lassiez-faire' approach, and the economy gets more capitalistic and then we FEEL the repercusions of it in the economic lulls of the capitalistic undulations.
The solution, as indirect as it seems, is to educate the government and the public on technology and discourage the lassiez-faire approach. Otherwise, as seen in the past, the undulations will get worse and worse, peaks higher and lower, the divide between the rich and poor steeper until th general public can not stand it any more and either suddenly become ultra-liberal or we get another Karl Marx.
It amazes me -- politics and economics never seem to take the middle-road (which has proven to be the best) -- they always seem to swing between faiths and cause havoc for us all (the pendulum theory). . .
I just went through a corporate wide announcement today regarding layoffs. This employer is the the world's 6th largest private employer. To avoid layoffs they are 1)curtailing travell to mission critical 2)all upper management will not recieve benifits or bonus for the next year, 3)raises will be put off for one quarter and a incentive program with bonus's for next year to make up for it. This company know's its value is through its employee's. WOuld be nice to see other companies do the same.
They were called Unions.
Whatever happened to them?
(I know that that last question is flamebait, but it has to be asked, if only for didactic reasons.)
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
What about disincentives for over-hiring when times are relatively good?
Departments tend to build empires that do not necessarily serve the needs of the company. When times get tough, the company has to slim back to a "normal" size.
// Alan Porter
Unions, already on the wane, have never gained much hold in the Tech Nation, populated by educated, mobile, skilled and independent-minded workers.
This anti-unionism fed right into the hands of employers. They buttered workers up with promises of get-rich-quick options packages, funky office toys and a sympathetic environment. Who could begrudge those eighty hour work weeks when your dotcom needed you?
Those dotcom feel-good moments were already waning when tech stocks went into freefall and layoffs loomed. Unions wouldn't save everyone from layoffs. I'll be the first to admit they have their problems. But the blatant abuse of tech employees (many often not even granted that status in the contract-labour world) should be a wake-up call. Internet Week reported on a dotcom unionization trend back in January. Maybe it is worth a second look!
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
"Geeks II": Josh and Eric, laid off and destitute, return to Idaho to work in McDonalds.
First of all, I think you need to get it through your head that many employees can't work frantically 8 hours a day even if they want to. People get stuck waiting for other people, and that's just life. When your job is to integrate A, B, and C, and three other programmers are currently coding A, B, and C, there isn't always something productive for you to do.
Also, some of us find slashdot to be professionally informative from time to time.
In the last year, I've seen two jobs go down the tubes. The first one I left, but only because I didn't feel that the company would be around much longer, and indeed it wasn't. A lot of my friends there were laid off, and I watched the dance the company did to (successfully) try to get around the fairly flimsy federal laws that would otherwise have required them to have paid 60 days of severance pay to everyone they let go. (Look up the WARN act if you're interested.) I watched my friends go, knowing they were getting shafted, telling me they thought the company was probably breaking the law, but they took their miniscule severance packages and left because they knew the company (a fortune 500 company) had expensive lawyers who could fight an extended lawsuit and they didn't.
At the second job, the owners called us all to a meeting one friday afternoon (payday) and announced that they couldn't pay us because we had run out of money. Two weeks earlier they had called us to a meeting to tell us the company was just fine and they didn't want to hear anyone say otherwise and we weren't going to go out of business any time soon. The monday after they failed to pay us, I arrived in the morning and they fired me. I eventually got the back pay they owed me, but only because I called the office of the state attorney general and did exactly what they told me to. None of my former coworkers that I spoke to got their back pay.
We all worked damn hard at both companies. I put in as much time doing my work as it took to accomplish the tasks the companies gave me. I created software of superior quality. I made my clients very happy, and they contracted for more work.
In the first case, when we founded the company (as a subsidiary of a larger company), we were promised that we had a certain amount of base capital, and that we weren't expected to turn a profit until quarter 7. We had certain financial targets to meet along the way. We met them. However, at the end of quarter 3, the parent company suddenly decided that we were going to turn a profit *right* *now* and ordered management to start firing people until payroll was less than receivables. Also, they cut our benefits. So I left.
In the second case, the company was privately held. There seemed to be work coming in the door. The owners kept telling us everything was fine, keep up the good work. Then one friday there was no paycheck. I'll never know whether or not the company could have been viable, but I can say from experience that it wasn't due to any lack of work ethic on the part of the "little people" who made the place run.
For my whole career, every employer I've had has demanded "loyalty" from me. Yet, only one ever showed me any. The rest of them have treated me as a disposable tool, to be used when needed and then sent away.
Now I'm on unemployment. I can't afford COBRA, and I won't be able to afford the medications my doctor said I'm supposed to take *every* *day* either when I run out. So, I'll be sick all the time until I get a new job.
I have no problem with companies being able to terminate employees for cause. However, these massive layoffs have to stop. Every time I've taken a job it was because it looked like it could have a little stability, but every time I've ended up unemployed again fairly soon. My father worked the same job for 20 years at a time. I have yet to have a job that lasted more than 2.5 years. I don't think it's reasonable for society to expect massive numbers of people to have to throw their lives into disarray every year or two and scramble to find work. As a culture, it's time we put a stop to it.
No, the poor people shoot each other. This keeps the unemployment rate and taxes down. Since Europe has disarmed its citizens, the number of unemployed skyrockets along with the taxes. Eventually all Europeans will be unemployed and thus starve since no taxes will be coming in. There will be no one to pay them.
At the same time, with the world talking wars and terrorism, the prospect for new growth in the US economy is obliterated. We'll be lucky if the current shaky situation lasts until 2003/2004. Then what? Then, even those companies that currently are still holding up will go under. How? Because confrontations between different coutries, groups and individuals will intensify. There will be even less stability than now and the reason to contiue current state of technological research and development will no longer exist. People will get scarred and will not know what hit them.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
> Whereas in many parts of Europe, the
> unemployment rates are so chronically high that this argument simply
> cannot be made.
True. But... there are also many European countries where unemployment is as low or lower than in the US at boom time. And those are countries practicing job protection. There is *no* European country (i.e., North/West Europe) where employees can be fired without *any* warning.
Let us also be aware that unemployment is a bit like the global climate, there are lots and lots of factors causing it. Take Finland e.g., currently having a very high unemplyment rate. Before the sudden disappearance of the Soviet market, late 80's, it was boom time in Finland, unemployment effectively zero (i.e. as you said, only hard-unemployable people were unemployed). The painful restructuring necessitated by changing over to Western European markets is still ongoing even after a decade.
But *labor policy is the same as it was then*. No change.
So, let's be careful with what unemployment statistics prove by looking only at one factor and ignoring all the others. It's a statistical minefield. OK?
As i see it, labour laws have a very small impact in a country's success compared to things like a good judiciary system (and believe me, the courts in Portugal are slow and mostly incompetent) or freedom of press (Portugal was under a fascist dictatorship until 1974).
Maybe this is a prejudice from my part, but i would expect that Italy suffers from similar problems as Portugal.
This is an American throwback, from the days when we were still dependant on English corporations to plan our cities and provide our goods. Of course, eventually we brightened up and LEFT, taking on the Big Boys with everything from muskets to cannonballs to keep their corporate-run claws off our lives. Now we're back, and even though we (the techies) virtually run the world, we're taking more and more shit from these corporations every day. Why are they in charge? Could *your* boss keep his own server running for, oh, a day? Could *your* manager code a program that counts to five? More importantly, could your CEO, the guy who makes an average of 450 TIMES MORE THAN YOU DO, even answer an email without help?
IMO, there are three options. Freelance is one, but only if you're either 1) neighborly or 2) a prima donna about it. If you're 1), you can charge twenty bucks to everybody you know to fix/code/whatever you do anything they've got. If you're 2), you have to have panache, because you have to be able to outbabble people who've sat for mind-deafening hours in leadership seminars; but surprisingly, being a prima donna freelance techie works pretty well for quite a few people I know. Another option is Unionization--I thought this was *great* idea for techies. It would put us damn near in control of the world, but hey, if these damn executives would just read some basic sci-fi they'd've known THAT was coming.
The third option is for techies to simply stop taking shit, but this has to be done on a much more intensive scale than simply telling one's boss or one's company to fuck off. For one thing, if all we do is refuse to work except under better, more sensible conditions (ie, I want the OSHA ergonomic rules back, asshole!) then all that will happen is that suddenly every major tech company will be staffed with foreigners making half what you did anyway. There have already been plenty of reports of tech companies generating FALSE reports of work shortages to convince the SEC and immigration to let them bring over more cheap work from abroad. So what the techies would need to do is get together, and not only refuse to tolerate crap like we're getting now (and it is getting ridiculous; Jon here didn't catch the half of it)--AND we need to start nailing these companies when they lie to try and cover for our behaviour. We need to tell the media what the conditions are so they can't be ignored. We need to start pointing fingers at companies that fire a couple thousand American workers and then apply for more foreign labor in three months because they're "desperately shorthanded". Or companies that demand more foreign labor, yet they turn down 80% of their American applicants (usually because we cost too much). Finally, more techies need to get out there and run companies of their own (this is already done somewhat)--but they need to do it from a TECHNICALLY FEASIBLE standpoint. I'd hate to say it, but every tech businessman I know went totally turncoat as soon as he became a "shareholder"--suddenly it was all about the bottom line again. As a dissident shareholder of a tech company myself, I'm convinced that nothing good will ever come of slavedriving. Nothing ever has, and nothing ever will. Every time a group of fatcats gets together to whip some other group into working at great profit to no-one but the fatcats, shit gets ugly. Let's make it ugly NOW, then, before our children are facing riots over it.
ST
Lockheed Martin's hiring- and it's for everything because it looks like they're scoring the fighter contracts...
Probably the most important reason for the fall of the Soviet Empire was the Afgan war. Russians were not able to carry the economical burden anymore, that's why they collapsed. Without Afgan Mudjahedin (with CIA support, of course) the cold war would not stop.
Seems to me that they produce a hell of a lot of things- many things you're not aware of.
The generators and turbines that power all the AC plants in the country...
The refrigeration systems that cool office buildings and the electric motors for just about everything AC powered...
The lightbulbs most people use...
Many of the plastics you use...
Jet Engines on the airliners you fly in...
Many of the household appliances you use...
Furthermore, GE provides all kinds of services...
GE is somewhere over 100 years old and does seem to be doing the opposite (They are worth some 349.14 Billion, bringing in some 12.7 billion over the current share value each year...). Now, you might be claiming that this is the exception, but you left no room for exceptions in your claims.
Frankly speaking, I wouldn't mind a few 50+ year old companies like GE or IBM, thank you very much.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
As far as telling people far in advance goes, I think that if they could do that well enough to really work, they probably wouldn't have the problems that caused the layoffs. After 9/11 US Airways is clearly in trouble. Not a situation the execs could see coming in June.
Finally, for blue collar types, layoffs are awful because it generally means the industry they have training in is in serious flux and that there are a lot fewer jobs out their for them. For most of the professionals I know who were laid off, it gave them the kick they needed to make their lives their own.
Getting fired or laid off hurts the individual without a doubt. But keeping people a company doesn't need or can't afford hurts everyone dealing with the company from the owners to the employees to the customers.
-John Van Voorhis
"Your constitution has been made a joke by new powers."
Which would those be exactly? I don't really get much out of your post.
If you want to argue about the nature of the constitution then by all means make sure that you have your thinking cap on because I really am well versed in this subject. Email would be just fine for this perhaps
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin