Today was my first day at work after being away for a month. During my absence there were more layoffs which is starting to be the theme of spring. I’ve been with the same company for nearly ten years and I’ve survived five different rounds of layoffs. The tale told to us by management is always consistent, the same way I’m sure it must be for any company: it’s about money.
I don’t have a degree in economics. I’m not the most studied in that field nor am I all that interested. However, I do know that when a company is making money, that’s a good thing. So what about when a company is making money but people are still getting laid off? Surely there must be an underlying reason for that obvious disconnect.
There is an unspoken awkwardness after layoffs. It always seems to me like management is walking around thinking, “It could have been you. Be grateful it wasn’t.” And the employees respond like scolded children, working harder out of fear that they too will have to be looking for work in a difficult market. But the relationship between employer and employee is symbiotic, an aspect that seems lost only to the company. Yes, without a company, the worker doesn’t have a job; but without workers, the company doesn’t have anything.
I’m sure that there are more factors that go into deciding who to lay off than what I am aware of. But from an employee’s perspective, someone who has seen people with families lose their job, it’s hard to see how the executives look at anything but a spreadsheet with numbers. This is how people are turned into corporate assets, this is how we lose our humanity to shareholder profits. This is how we continue to automate the business of life.
