With the economy rocking-and-rolling and unemployment dropping to (nearly) statistical full employment, what's the left to do? Why, complain about layoffs!
And complain they do. One example being a new book, written by someone who, by his own admission, has never been fired or laid off.
No doubt, French youth rioting has excited the American left. They always appreciate a good protest.
And they would surely like to see a little more protesting here. Yeah, all the illegal immigrants protesting against immigration reform they probably had not read, nor properly understood, was exciting, but most protests--from anti-war protests to protests against the evil behemoth that is Wal-Mart--have been anemic in the U.S. We haven't had a good, solid, multi-racial, cross-generational protest/riot in decades in this country.
So maybe the French have it right. The left needs to be fomenting resentment against employers and business and corporate America in general. Then, finally, we too can have some good, solid, car-burning, rock-throwing, tear-gassing riots in America, too.
I'm just speculating, there. What I can say for sure is that, since the riots, there has been a steady drumbeat from the left against corporate America, specifically focused on how bad corporate America is to its brow-beaten employees. And, frankly, this is the place where I think the American (and, let's be honest, the global) left turns from simply being wrong in their policies and strategies to pernicious. Because the message, implicit and explicit, is that you shouldn't take responsibility for your own life. That it is depressing and disheartening to see yourself as the source of your own achievements an success. That you shouldn't see yourself as the prime-mover in your own life, but rather a victim or beneficiary of forces outside of you that are too large and powerful for you to control or understand.
Oh, you whacky conservative, you might say. That's just more rabid right-wing hyperbole! The left isn't saying that.
Oh no? Well, check out How Secure is Your Job, by Laura Barcella.
This artile is a book review of The Disposable American, a book by Louis Uchitelle that takes the truly insidious view that your self-concept, and self-worth, should be determined by labor laws that prevent a company that no longer wants you working there to actually fire you or lay you off.
If it apparently the author's contention that the "insidious" self-help movement is "insidious" because it has encouraged workers to accept more responsibility for their own job security than necessary! Ack! I've barely started, and already my face is twitching.
As a brief personal aside, the best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off. It's happened to me twice so far, and, although tough and difficult to get through at the outset--especially the first time it happened--my only regret now is that it didn't happen five years earlier, or that I hadn't just quit five years earlier. Or ten.
I'm not saying it was easy, and I'm not saying it wasn't a shock to the system, but there were much more interesting things to do and much better (or, at least, different) people to work with and interact with, and I've since enjoyed opportunities and personal growth that I can guarantee you never would have happened, had I never lost a job because the government made it too expensive and difficult to fire me.
To pretend that it is, generally, good for people to work in one place for their entire lives is bad enough. To pretend that putting your head down and staying in your cubicle and spending the rest of your life in your well-worn rut is good for your or your self-esteem is nuts. And how does it say anything positive about you that your company can't fire you or lay you off because there is a law against it?
And let's not even get to the negative impact such regulation has on employment. The fact is, our unemployment rate has fallen--again--while the French unemployment rate is rising and the unemployment rate among French youth is around 23%.
But perhaps the book isn't entirely destructive. He does say this:
First of all, there is an oversupply of skilled people relative to the jobs that are available. And secondly, we don't properly measure the damage to the companies themselves and the productivity that comes from job security.
The first, in my opinion, is not a negative. It is a positive. It's good for the economy and society as a whole to have an oversupply of skilled labor, even if it's not a lot of fun to be skilled in certain things that are at a saturation level in the economy. But some of those people will learn new disciplines, and be able to apply their old skills to their new discipline. And others will find a way to apply their skills by starting a new business, becoming a consultant, or doing something else that is adaptive in a way that contributes to the overall economy and improves their own lives.
It's the second part I agree with. The hire-fire cycle isn't great for the companies. And an effort to inform companies that it's not a good business strategy to hire and fire based on this quarter's results is a good idea.
But is the hire/fire cycle really bad for the employees? Only if they let it be. In most cases, it's a positive. Time to finally start that business they've been thinking about. Or to become a writer. Or spend a few solid weeks developing a new skill, and add that to the resume. It's the individuals choice to respond to getting laid off by sitting around in their underwear watching Oprah and feeling sorry for themselves. While they may do it, it's certainly irresponsible and unproductive to encourage it.
Unfortunately, encourage it they do.
To people who are, in effect, told that this is a be-your-own-manager society, when they're laid off, [it's implied] that they don't have value as workers -- and that's a considerable psychological blow and a source of mental illness.
Aw, jeeze. Getting laid off is a source of mental illness. Great. Assuming there could possibly be something to it, wouldn't working in a crappy job for decade after decade also be a source of mental illness? In which case getting fired might actually be a source of mental health and personal development? Can't it effect your self-worth to in a rut, year after year, somewhere that doesn't appreciate your contributions even if they don't--or can't--get rid of you? Can't spending your time in an insular group of people, often in the same boss/employee relationship year after year, be destructive? Cause the employee to lose perspective? Make them too fearful to look for a better job or strike out on their own?
And, so what? If someone implies that I don't have value as a worker--well, fine, I'm a whole lot more and better than "a worker". I'm not a worker-bee, dudes, I frickin' rock. What kind of crap is that?
If someone is taking a layoff as something more than, "Hey, this ain't workin' out," that's the problem, not that they got laid off. If they were doing a good job and they know it, if they've got skill and they know it, if some corporate flack doesn't get it, whose fault is that? Whose loss is that? It's theirs, not yours. If a layoff is a huge blow to the self-esteem--and it can be, I'm not saying it can't be--then the problem is that the person was too tied up in their job in the first place. And getting laid off will only help them break that bad habit.
But it means that people don't get back into the work force using all their old skills. They don't take risks, and they suffer. It's a memory that undermines them for many years.When true, then that is the problem--that getting laid off can be a memory than undermines them for years. Not that they got laid off and not that businesses have the discretion to hire and fire at will. And they don't take risks if they get laid off? They were taking risks when they stayed in the same old rut of a job, being the cubicle monkey for their self-centered creep of a boss, working hard at doing the pointless busywork their out-of-touch manager assigned them, while all the time that guy was just going to fire them on a whim, anyway? Come on.
Folks who wait to get fired from the second-rate company they've been working for half their lives are not big risk takers by nature. It's just a fact.
[W]e all have a life narrative, and work is part of that narrative, and the narrative is part of our identity. If you take away the work and the identity that comes with the work, you interrupt the life narrative.Ugh. You know, maybe the work part of the life narrative sucks and we aren't doing anything about it, and getting fired will be the best thing that could possibly happen to us. Maybe it's time to end that chapter, and start a new one, picking up a new narrative. Maybe labor laws should have nothing to do with "life narratives" and more to do with what makes the best economy for the largest number of people. Maybe.
The author (who is writing this book, and has never been fired or laid off!) also says:
In fact, there's any number of statistics that show that we have skilled people in excess of the demand for them. Thirty-seven percent of all airline attendants have bachelor's degrees. You don't need a bachelor's degree to be an airline attendant. It's nice to have it.There are lies, damned lies, and statistics, quoth Samuel Clemens. And, the fact is, you can get a bachelors degree in areas that have nothing to do with being employable or having marketable skills, but have a lot to do with attracting young folks and their parental money to a particular college or university. You can also get bachelors degrees in fields or areas that are obscure, not profitable to work in, or are way over-saturated and have been for decades. And no labor law can change that. Even a law to make all BAs and BFAs be available only in in-demand fields will result in those fields being saturated by the time the second or third generation of graduates came out. And would leave very little room for individuals to find what they are best at, anyway. In the end, it's not the bachelor's degree, or lack thereof, or the lack a government law to make good jobs that makes these folks flight attendants. Those people decide to take and keep those jobs, for a variety of reasons. And that's the beginning and end of it. The rest is just padding.
In addition to never having been laid off, I'm not sure the writer has ever run a business, or has much an idea of how one might be run, given his description of the "taking down of barriers to layoffs" that happened between '77 and '97 (according the author):
As one barrier [to layoffs] after another came down, the layoffs went up. We had a steel company shutting down mills, and there was uproar about it, attempts from the communities and the unions and church groups to buy the mills and keep them open, then that disappeared. We gradually acquiesced to the process.Why did the efforts to keep the mills open disappear? Because it was too expensive to profitably run the mills? Because the unions made it impossible to produce steel and compete? Maybe they "acquiesced" to the process for the same reason we might "acquiesce" to the weather. Obviously, if there was an uproar, and they had been able to keep the mills open and run them profitably, they would have.
Then, this cryptic bit:
That might require, perhaps, some recognition that the private sector -- by itself, even with the best will in the world -- cannot create enough jobs to keep people fully employed at good wages.And what is the implication? That we can create enough jobs to keep people fully employed at good wages with government intervention? And doesn't that beg the question as to why the only nations in the world at or near statistical full employment (including the US) are the countries where there is the least government intervention and the most leeway is given to the hiring and firing of employees?
The article wraps with Louis Uchitelle complaining about how Who Moved My Cheese? tells people to take responsibility for their own careers, and that if they get laid off, they should go find another job rather than sit on their butts and complain about it. That's a terrible message, according to Louis (who was never been laid off, I remind you) and extremely damaging to the self-esteem. Yikes! It makes them responsible of their own lives, instead of putting the responsibility for their lives on their employers, the government, and unions.
Sorry, Louis, but that's exactly backwards. It's fantasizing that your life is somebody else's responsibility, in any way, shape, or form, that is a destructive and damaging message. To suggest that anybody other than you is responsible for your general happiness, self-esteem, and the success or failure of your career, is damaging. It's an attitude that advocates sitting around and blaming others, ineffectually, for problems and difficulties that are part of a productive and interesting life, instead of advising them to take action, take advantage of the difficulties they face, and use them to grow, change, and create something positive.
But then, that's not the message of the modern American left. The message of the modern American left is, "When life hands you lemons, throw them on the ground, stomp your feet, cry about it, then curl up into the fetal position until someone passes a law saying that life isn't allowed to hand you lemons any more."
Best of luck with legislating that one, guys.
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