When job markets improves, lots of employees will bolt

http://news.google.com/url?ntc=0M3C0&q=http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2498459

April 10, 2004, 10:18PM

On your mark, get set ... employees eyeing door
By JULIE FORSTER
Knight-Ridder Tribune News


ST. PAUL, Minn. -- In his former job, Mike McGuire's workload grew with every round of layoffs. As head of service for a medical and dental benefits administrator, he took on increasing responsibility in the last few years as management layers were peeled back. The stress was getting to him. So when a headhunter called, he jumped. His former boss tried to entice him to stay with stock options and other perks. "Yeah, all of that," McGuire said.

But as the saying goes: It was too little, too late. As the job market begins to loosen, companies could find that the years of retaining their best employees with merely the promise of a job are a thing of the past. Having been socked with three years of cost cutting, salary freezes and layoffs, some survivors are polishing off their résumés and preparing to bolt.

Employees intending to leave their posts as soon as the job market opens up are at the highest level in four years, according to WorkTrends 2004, an annual survey of more than 10,000 U.S. workers. The report, by Minneapolis workplace research firm Gantz Wiley, was released in February. There is a weariness of it all from the survivors of the layoffs," said Scott Brooks, executive consultant and research director for Gantz Wiley.

To be sure, the productivity gains posted over the last few years are good for the economy. But those gains have come on the backs of professionals, many of whom are operating in a sort of shell-shocked haze while their companies extract as much as they can. The economic downturn forced McGuire, 37, to take on longer hours, more work and more stress as the company went through several rounds of layoffs. When he came to the company four years ago, he was responsible for two call centers. By the end he was in charge of call centers across the country and what had once been his boss' job -- the entire telecommunications side of the operation. He also ended up running all Web-based customer-service functions.



snip....

Unemployed 46 months here.

like the slaves were grateful to have masters.

I'd rather be dead. I might have died for it before, I would still die for it, even if it means starving.

The employer should be grateful that they have a him as a slave.

I know someone personally in that situation. I used to be her coworker. She is still employed. I DO NOT ENVY HER! If she stays in that situation too long she will either become too sick or die of a heart attack from stress. I don't think she's so "lucky." It's either be a slave or lose her house, which she has no time to spend in.

I served this country for 4 years in cold war service and South East Asia. I would like to think it was for freedom, yet people are enslaved by companies who are slave masters. They have control over people's whole lives. That's no my idea of a free country.

Some people can't even take a simple walk in the park or have a peaceful lunch without their cell phones urging them to attend to some non-urgent problem. It's like being on a leash. Grateful my ASS!

The only anger I have toward the employees is that they don't get up the guts to organize and revolt.

Read Give Me Liberty by Gerry Spence.
In particular, read the story about the slave who did not feel so lucky and escaped, to be arrested over and over, refusing to go back
to being so "lucky."

Freedom includes freedom from the servitude of "employers" who work their workers to KAROSHI.

By the way I have read Spence as well.

This improved economic performance comes at the price of burning out some of the best workers- and making many others unemployed- all for short term profit.

Cool, eh. Very 'Apres nous, la deluge' of them.