“Not Our Responsibility”
Wed., August 13, 10:55 AM
When it comes to increasing profitability, many companies prefer to do it by letting employees go. Not only do they save on salaries, they don’t have to pay taxes or insurance either.
Of course, if you fire a lot of people, they can file for unemployment, and then the company’s unemployment taxes go up. So the trick is, whenever possible, to force them to resign. In Connecticut, at least, a worker can’t file if s/he left voluntarily. It falls into the category of what I call accountant tricks. A related tactic is to back the employee into a corner wherein the employer says, “we could fire you for that.” And then, “but if you resign voluntarily, we won’t put it – whatever it was – on your permanent record.”
I’m fortunate that none of this has ever befallen me, but I watched it happen enough times. At my last “real job,” I simply held on. I had watched several people insulted until they quit in disgust. They quit. No severance pay. No unemployment. Just hardship. And they never were counted in the unemployment figures. I was insulted too, had responsibilities taken away, was yelled at (not just scolded, loud yelling) for things that didn’t concern me, and was often ignored. I knew it was time to leave, but I was damned if they were going to insult me into resigning. Eventually I was “downsized,” with severance pay – a couple of months’ salary – and still entitled to file for unemployment if I hadn’t found a job when the severance ran out. I just happened to be lucky. All I lost was the best job I ever had.
Another accountant trick is to increase the hours of salaried people. Husband briefly worked in a place where the thirty-five-hour week was increased to thirty-seven and a half. Did that extra half hour a day increase profitability? Were they staying open longer? No. Were they adding any kind of customer service? No. What they had done was reduce everyone’s rate of pay per hour. Then they could go back to their stockholders and report that they had saved money because they were paying their people less.
What’s my point? People lose income and no one is responsible. They can’t feed and shelter their families or pay medical bills, and no one is responsible. Not the employer – “s/he doesn’t work here any more” – and certainly not the government. The State of Connecticut – having disposed of all the extra income it had collected a couple of years ago – is also closing down services, not only leaving the poor with fewer options but also creating more jobless people. (And probably not eligible for benefits either.)
Husband was listening to a radio talk show last night, the kind where the talkers mostly like the sound of their own voices and don’t say anything new. So Husband – so out of touch with the state of the world – announced to me this morning that we’re in a recession. I repeated to him what I’ve said before, that it depends on your definition of recession. His response is, “we’ll have to have another war.” I pointed out that the last wars haven’t helped. He’s all for bombing North Korea. It’s scary to think that there are some other old men who would actually do it.
There are lots more instances of “not responsible” people or companies. I’ll probably come back to the subject another time. It’s just more pessimism than I can stomach right now.
