How Secure Is Your Job?

Author Louis Uchitelle talks about how the rising tide of layoffs in corporate America isn't just damaging the nation's job security, but our sense of self-worth.

In his new book, "The Disposable American," New York Times business writer Louis Uchitelle takes a sobering look at the sordid history -- and the future -- of layoffs in America.

Though the bulk of his expertise lays in the business realm, Uchitelle argues that layoffs' ascending frequency isn't just damaging America's job security, but our sense of self-worth. He writes that the ever-insidious "self-help" movement (specifically, books such as "Who Moved My Cheese?") has encouraged workers to accept more responsibility for their own job security than necessary -- unfairly placing the whole burden of fair wages, pensions and workplace stability on employees' shoulders rather than the corporate heads hiring (and firing) them in the first place.

Unsurprisingly, almost every person he interviews in "The Disposable American" seems to prove Uchitelle right. The human stories shared in the book echo Uchitelle's hypothesis that getting laid off has long-term negative effects on motivation and self-esteem, as well as making it harder to land a more challenging position the next time around.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/34283/

employed "at will" (of the doctors i work for....) i can be let go at any second, no reason given. i work morning, noon and night to try to make myself indispensable to them, but ya never know.......................

about layoffs and the massive effects they have on society

and in the "environmental" industry ... Job security is simply a dream.

as long as people keep committing crimes and appealing their convictions in the state of Alaska. I'm a self-employed legal transcriptionist transcribing criminal trials for appeal purposes. Not much chance that people are going to start behaving all of a sudden. It's very considerate of the bad guys to assure that all of us in the legal and criminal justice biz are able to put food on our tables. A bit of :sarcasm:

I lost my dream job when a new CEO came on board and let go an entire international dev team. Guess he wants his own people in there. Really pissed everybody off, too.

I've been with a worker-owned and operated cooperative for 15 years in an industry that doesn't lend itself to easy outsourcing.

:(

I wish you the best of luck in finding a new job!

to do, but I can't see him keeping me busy 40 hours a week.

They're too expensive and too high maintenance. They're being phased out and replaced with low-cost, high volume alternatives. The modern business is taking advantage of economies of scale offered by commodity human capital and giving more back to the stock holders and high level execs ... until those commodities we call humans start demanding more from their masters, also.

I work for a company that has found a recession resistant niche, in an industry that's usually very vulnerable to economic downturns.

I don't see them offshoring developmentally disabled and mentally ill people anytime soon.

An old boss of mine told me long ago something I have never forgotten and which has at least helped keep me out of trouble most of the time. He said, "The moment you start thinking you're indispensable is the same moment management has started trying to find a way to replace you. Maybe they'll succeed, or maybe they won't, but management is single-minded. They will always be trying." People who believe otherwise are living a fantasy. I do not wish ill toward these people; I truly hope their fantasy remains intact, and for some, it does. But for far too many, I'm afraid the illusion will be shattered some day.

Allow me to offer an example:

I work for a company that sells service disguised as a product. To offer this service, we need a mechanism to provide it. Traditionally, and logically, this mechanism has been people, all kinds of people doing different sorts of jobs that, combined, amount to providing the service itself. Increasingly, sales people (the people who convince consumers to purchase our service) have become more important than the direct service people (the people that actually provide the service). The company has regularly raised base salaries, incentives, benefits, commissions, bonuses, etc. Human resources has held job fairs, given hiring bonuses, paid bonuses to existing employees who refer a person successfully hired, all to try to hire new sales people to meet the increasing demand to acquire customers. The company has been restructured several times over to redirect resources to the sales division, to allow it to hire more people, offer those people more money, provide more training. The direct service sector of the company has suffered for this as wages have not kept up with those provided in the sales division and as benefits have been frozen or in some cases cut to allow more resources to be shifted.

A few months ago, a department in the sales division that employed those sales people who regularly had the highest sales numbers had its mission redirected to assisting other sales departments increase their efficiency. They continued in their regular roles but also took the place of other sales people, working among them, to help train them and overall increase the numbers throughout the division. The whole process worked very well as far as sales was concerned. These people increased their own numbers and the numbers of everyone around them. The bottom line of the company was improving on a daily basis, it seemed.

Direct service divisions weren't too happy, though. They argued, quite correctly, that without them the company didn't exist. They were, they said, indispensable. Sales were necessary of course, but if you have nothing to sell that the consumer wants, how can the sales people do their jobs. The people working in these divisions started to make a lot of noise about it all, and eventually, upper management knew they had to do something.

To make what could be a very long story a bit shorter, this was the result:

The company was restructured again with everyone's job descriptions changed, including the deployment of new technologies the reduced the need for some of the people in the service division. Direct service divisions suddenly found themselves with more resources, which made them happy, but also with sales quota and a smaller optimum headcount, which didn't. No one was fired in the service divisions, but attrition was allowed to take hold. The sales division had to give something up to allow for the flow of resources back to the service divisions, and what was decided was to take the highest payroll department and eliminate it. And so it was done, on a Monday afternoon, with no warning and after the department had recently been recognized as the most productive in the company. This department was the one mentioned above, the one with the people with the highest sales numbers and also the highest payroll. Twenty people, most of them having been with the company at least 10 years, the best of the sales division, the division considered by upper management as the most essential to continued success, all of it was simply gone.

I'm a part of the service division and now have a sales quota. My position is important, but if I don't meet my quota, or, it seems, if I do my job too well, I may become indispensable and subsequently unemployed.