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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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 ?
Which started first?
.. a bit interesting, but not really important, unless they seem about to do something unpleasant.
...
It's clearly a feedback loop. If you don't feel that you can trust your employer, then you don't act as if you could. If your employer doesn't feel he can trust you, then he doesn't act as if he could.
But when I look back through history (and memory) I generally see that those with more power in a relationship are the less trustworthy party (on the average). And in the employer-employee relationship, it's generally the employer that has the greater part of the power. And they tend to use it unfeelingly.
It doesn't even seem to be a matter of malice. It's as if a part of the job training of a manager is to view the employees as "animate tools" (as the poet Horace said). So they really don't notice when they treat people unfairly. Those aren't people, they're employees. Intimidation is a standard tool that they use to control the "animate tools". That they might object is
Just remember. Your boss knows who you are. He could sympathise if he wanted to. His boss runs into you occasionally. He might know your name, but the chance that he'd know how you feel about something is slight. His boss may see you on formal occasions. His boss has never even heard of you. He knows that your kind of person exists.
And your boss has to justify himself to his boss.
And his boss has to justify himself to his boss.
And
There might be a better way to organize things, but this is the one we've got. This is the one we live in. And based on past history, none of us have any reason to trust the higher levels of the pyramid to be sympathetic, or to act in an honorable and feeling manner.
Different countries have different rules and histories, so this might be specific to the US. But probably not. Probably, however, it's more extreme in the US than in most places, because we have a large percentage of citizens employed by large organizations, and because we have fewer rules to protect the employees than civilized countries do. And because for the last three decades the process of selecting the leaders has been so totally dominated by who could pay how much. And it's been getting worse. Now I think it may be dominated by how many TV stations and newspaper publishers you can purchase. (People with that kind of money used to avoid political office.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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)
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
No it is affecting geeks, who in this area had very little to do with the web. I was a systems geek, who designed control systems. Some of my friends wrote drivers, UIs, or network aps. We had very little to do with the web, and little use for the MS systems our company used for infrastructure, all of our work as on *nix systems. We are still out of work just the same. In each case it was sudden and with no warning. It was not from one of the dot-coms, this was (before this started) an old and stable company. A few people had just purchased houses (in my case I had just bought a new bike), and in retrospect it is obvious that managment had more than enough time to tell us that such things were not the best of ideas.
My skills are up to date. That is not an issue. Unfortunatly in my area this does not make a bit of difference. Companies are still laying off, with little appearence of changing soon. Rolling with the punches can be a bit tough when the same companies that do currently have job openings are laying of every other week.
I have to agree with Katz, laying off is one thing, but I seem to recall the companies doing things to help those affected. In my case, and the cases of my friends we got 'termination packages' that were at least reesonable only if we signed away all of our rights.
This is my complaint it is not the layoffs those are bad enough, but this idea that it is ok not only to lay people off and at the same time dangle carrots to see how high they will jump. Why should I do anything to help the company out when they have told me that not only are my services no longer needed, but that they *knew* this would be happening as much as 6 months before?
It is quite resonable to keep the work force informed as to the actions and health of the company. It is good for morale, and that makes it good for the company. Any other view is rationalazation.
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)
Who protects us from the soldiers? It wasn't soldiers who wrote the constitution. The commander-in-chief must be a civilian, not a soldier (as per the constitution). Beware of those who bow before the military for they'll end up at it's mercy (i.e. Germany 1939, Turkey). Remember, the soldier should be fighting for an idea, not a piece of cloth.
. . . yeah, after listening to the poets, campus organizers, et al.
i wouldn't argue for a second with the idea that the military is a noble and vital profession. it most certainly is. but they should not be setting national agendas, since the focus of their professional training is the use of deadly force.
take a look at countries ruled by military dictatorships and ask yourself if that looks appealing to you.
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.
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.
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.
I'm afraid slashdot misled you again. The ATA does not make all hacking a terrorist act. The ATA references USC title 18 Sec 1030 for definition of a "protected computer". That law essentially defines two classes of "protected computer": A) Government and bank, and B) Engaged in interstate commerce.
The ATA only references (A), government and bank.
I still think the law is excessively broad and excessively harsh. But we are not helping our cause much by misrepresenting the law.
Good points about Lincoln.