The Problem With Things

I'm having a hard time these days with being part of the system, and I don't think I am alone.  Generally, it seems anyone I talk to these days about work is feeling much the same.  Work is no longer one's life the way it used to be.  Work does not provide the meaning and identity and community to the extent that it used to for our parents.  Employers do not have any obligation to their employees and employees are beginning to sense this shift and react with an attitude shift of their own, mainly in the areas of commitment and quality.
 
Again, these are generalities and from just from one person's perspective, but there are some things that can be seen at the national level.  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm    300,000 less jobs in IT in the USA in the last 2 years.  I'm sure that has changed the attitude of more than a few.

Here's the thing - companies think that this is what they need to do pretty much at all costs   1) make 20% more profit than the year before   2)  cut costs mercilessly in order to improve the bottom-line  

Granted that there is an element of business logic behind these goals, the extent that companies will go to to increase profits from $1 Billion to $1.2 Billion from one year to the next is disappointing at best and immoral and even illegal at worst.  The long term repercussions of these short term  ( 4 month ) decisions are showing up in several locations but most visible to me is in the attitudes of general working folk.

When we are required to withhold paid services due to sheer lack of man power, when we are asked to lay off our friends and manage off-shore teams in their place because they will work for a smaller hourly amount,  it is very difficult to maintain the same enthusiasm.  Then when all the savings are blown on re-work, continuous turn-over and re-training as well as a brand new mountain of overhead and admin people to handle all the new administration it requires, it becomes mind-bogglingly illogical and frustrations grow exponentially.

I can't imagine that I'm the only one questioning the need to work for, buy from, or support in any way companies that lay people off when they are at the same time making $10 Billion profit.   There are so many companies, especially privately owned companies that are happy just to make a profit - period.  In many minds it is simple greed to trample over the loyal employee who put you there in the quest for a bigger profit. It is hard to respect, support, encourage a person or company that will withhold service or product from it's  paying customers because it would increase costs to provide the service or product. 

I echo these words about Henry George;


"I do not wish to be misunderstood as falling into the trap of the socialists and communists who condemn all privately owned business, all factories, all machinery and organizations for producing wealth. There is nothing wrong with private corporations owning the means of producing wealth. Georgists believe in private enterprise, and in its virtues and incentives to produce at maximum efficiency. It is the insidious linking together of special privilege, the unjust outright private ownership of natural or public resources, monopolies, franchises, that produce unfair domination and autocracy.
The means of producing wealth differ at the root: some is thieved from the people and some is honestly earned. George differentiated; Marx did not. The consequences of our failure to discern lie at the heart of our trouble"



 Not only do we need to be more discerning of the way corporations acquire the means of producing wealth, we need to be willing to take a stand when it is "thieved from the people".  We need to accept that it is our responsibility to seek out and support companies that make an honest living and are content with that.  As consumers, we need to give our business to companies that we would be proud to be working for.  It is part of the free market checks and balances that has been forgotten or neglected and we are are now reaping the results.

Sources of additional information:
"Workers in a Lean World"  Kim Moody
"Progress and Poverty"  Henry George
"Race to the bottom"  Wikipedia - Specifically Louis Brandeis originating reference to competitive liberalism.